From traditional to technology-based tertiary education in Sri Lanka

According to the statistics of the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka, every year about 125,000 G.C.E. (A/L) qualified students fall into the category of “denied higher education opportunity” due to the fact that the conventional university system does not have the capacity to accommodate all who are qualified. Online learning has been viewed as a strategy to increase access to higher and continuing education accordingly. The government of Sri Lanka signed an agreement in 2003 with the Asian Development Bank and launched the Distance Education Modernisation Project (DEMP) to modernise the traditional distance education system in the country. As a result, a state-of-the- art network called the National Online Distance Education Service (NODES) has been established by the DEMP in order to facilitate the delivery of online post secondary level programmes developed by the universities and other private and public sector post-secondary educational institutions. The aim of the study was to find out the perceptions of stakeholders on effectiveness of online learning programmes of NODES in Sri Lanka.