Promoting online learning through learners' vision

Rapidly improving services over the internet and increasing availability of web-based education (WBED) products and services encourages the management of the education institutions to decide for any tangible transformation in the existing education paradigm. As learners represent the customers of any education paradigm, it becomes an important issue to understand their vision over the infl uence of technology on the current education environment. Without this knowledge any transformation of the current education paradigm may seem to be possible, but may lead to some unforeseen results. It is foreseen that introduction of a course management tool at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) would initiate an effective transformation of currently practiced education scheme. This has also created an unavoidable hesitation to carry out a full-scale implementation of e-learning. In order to resolve this problem, we (the researchers at SQU) are encouraged to carry out a full-scale experimental study to identify the visions of learners with respect to the increasing influence of Technology on the current education. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted on the learner community in the Faculty of Science along with a useful discussion and conclusion.