ABSTRACT
Technology has the potential to help establish a compromise among the frequently confrontational goals of reducing costs, expanding access, and offering quality education. Different stakeholders will prioritize these elements of the triangle in different ways. This chapter analyzes technology from the perspective of faculty, administrators, and students. It presents the current landscape of several of the disruptive innovations inundating the online education field and establishes the practical connections between emerging technologies and their interdependencies. The chapter identifies the main quality measures associated with such innovations through a broad framework for quality viewpoints, taking into account the perspectives of the institution, faculty, and students and the tight bonds among quality, cost, and access. As of mid-2013, the landscape is in great flux, largely because of the emergence of massive open online courses and the enthusiasm shown for them by many of those same prestigious universities. Mobile computing has enabled the surge of an entirely new sector of learning: mLearning.
