Abstract:

Many Universities are offering a growing number of distant education courses as a mean to increase quality of delivery. It is often seen as a way to decrease the learning cost. Most of the literature has argued that the interest of E-learning is withdrawn from the less cost for attendance (transport cost and time savings for both students and teachers). This paper argues that the cost issue is only part of the story. First, it is a much more complicated matter than a simple accounting estimation. It involves technical choices for example between investment in authoring or expenses on tutoring. It is an important issue for emerging countries which are in need to set up a distant education strategy. They may invest large amounts in authoring sophisticated virtual courses without optimizing their use. Second, what should be expected from E-teaching is the better cost benefit balance. In many cases, for example, E-courses are more expensive than face to face class. But, E-courses may help achieving better internal efficiency of the system. Third, positive results from E-learning are helped by change in pedagogy, not only by communication technology. Finally, the analysis in the paper, based on real cases drawn from Tunisian teaching experience, points out critical institutional and actors behavior issues related to conducting innovation and technology changes in this field. The paper conclusion gives some crucial conditions which help optimizing distant education implementation in emerging countries.