Mobile devices and the future of free education 2010

Abstract

The costs of education can never be totally eliminated, but present trends point to the possibility of an asymptotic curve, where the education costs will continue to approach zero, without ever quite reaching it. These curves can be deceiving as the drop in costs increases exponentially. OpenCourseware or Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming important resources for both learners and instructors as the quantity and quality of the online content increases. Combine this with the growing ubiquity of mobile devices and the possibility of free education becomes possible for the first time. M-learning is an emerging area of distance education. The rising availability of open access learning materials that are interoperable, reusable and re-purposable by many learners and learning institutions is inevitable. Learners can access this free content from anywhere at anytime because of the ever increasing ubiquity of small powerful computers or mobile devices.