Equitable Means Accessible

The advancement in information and communication technologies in the last few decades has led to various innovations in the world of education. The application of technology makes information more accessible and knowledge more widely distributed, giving rise to various opportunities for instruction and learning. One such example of technological innovations in the education sector is the emergence of online academic institutions across the globe. Rising interests in the theological and pedagogical issues associated with the use of online teaching and learning platforms for spiritual/ministerial formation have prompted this study. Using a literature-based research approach, this paper analyzes data collected from books, journal articles and dissertations to ascertain the appropriateness or otherwise of online theological education for spiritual/ministerial formation from an African Christian perspective. It also discusses some pedagogical issues in online education. The paper argues that there is nothing inherently wrong with the use of online theological education for spiritual/ministerial formation; yet, the lack of access to electricity and internet facilities in some communities and unethical practices in the virtual space are major setbacks in this mode of education. In view of this, spiritual/ministerial formation through online education is encouraged only if the student is committed to ensuring ethical practices in the online learning environment, has the appropriate logistics to access the technologically-mediated teaching and learning process and is enrolled in an institution which has the pedagogical, scholarly, technological requirements for ensuring effective teaching and learning in a virtual space. Keywords: Africa, Online Education, Theological Education, Spiritual Formation

While researchers have used qualitative and quantitative methods to study postsecondary education access opportunity for rural Black youth, the use of critical mixed methods approaches to examine postsecondary education inequities for rural Black youth is unrealized. The purpose of this paper is to highlight lessons learned in using equity-centered, participatory approaches to study postsecondary education access and opportunity for rural Black youth and to develop a critical, asset-based scale to quantitatively investigate postsecondary education opportunity and access for rural Black youth. This study is informative for researchers seeking to develop critical, asset-based measures and instruments, and for educators and policymakers seeking to attend to place-based and racial educational inequities.

Globally the access of women education is still a debatable issue in most of developing countries. This study investigated how some aspects of indigenous education affected girls’ access to secondary education in Wabena tribal in Njombe region. The study focused the role of indigenous education on girls’ community life, and its effects on girls’ access to secondary education. The study employed qualitative research approach. Data were collected through interviews, questionnaires, focus group discussions and documentary reviews. The study found out that on reaching puberty, girls were denied access to secondary education or withdrawn from secondary schools to attend initiation ceremonies locally known as liwungo/likulo, which prepared girls for marriage. After initiation ceremonies, some girls engaged themselves in sexual relations, got pregnant while others were married and hence, lost their education opportunities. Therefore, perceived gender roles on household responsibilities and farm work, kept many girls at home as additional labour instead of attending secondary education. It was suggested that the society need to be sensitized on child rights to education; bad traditional practices; beliefs as well as attitudes that discriminate against girls’ access to education. Sensation campaigns have to involve stakeholders such as the government, CBOs, NGOs and religious organizations, public meetings, seminars and conferences. Article visualizations:

This chapter explores equity and access in digital education, addressing the impact of the digital divide on educational opportunities. It highlights socio-economic and geographical disparities and discusses infrastructure limitations and initiatives to expand internet access. Promoting digital inclusion involves designing inclusive learning experiences, providing accessible content, and enhancing digital literacy. Collaboration among educational institutions, government entities, and community organizations is crucial. Successful initiatives and funding sources are examined, while research studies evaluate long-term benefits and indicators of success. The chapter offers practical strategies and evidence-based recommendations for equity and access in digital education, urging action from educators, policymakers, and stakeholders for ongoing progress towards educational equality.

Virtual education has been gaining interest since technology has appeared in everything in our lives. Metaverse is one of the technologies that has been initiated since the late 90s and is currently being updated and renovated to suit current changes. However, many teachers and students still do not know how to utilize virtual space to create a new atmosphere in the learning process. Therefore, this study aims to show the results of using online learning in the form of virtual space in the field of education and how teachers and students respond to the process. In this study, the author wants to conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on the advantages and disadvantages of virtual education space based on many previous studies related to the topic. The results of surveys conducted by previous studies show that most students enjoy using virtual space as their learning method and can understand some lessons better when using virtual space compared to traditional learning—textbook-based learning and face-to-face learning. Unfortunately, there are several cases of student satisfaction results in online learning that are not optimal. But the results of the Spearman correlation on offline learning most have very good academic achievement (70.7%) and high learning motivation (76.0%), then during online learning most respondents have good academic achievement (76.0%) and low learning motivation (81.3%). In general, the author concludes that virtual space has very good potential in the future to be explored in depth in the field of education because of the development of skills in the use of technology and significant improvements in student academic achievement. However, guidance from teachers and parents is still needed so that students avoid bad things.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become increasingly popular as a means of delivering education on a global scale. However, comparative analyses across different contexts remain limited. To enhance the effectiveness and inclusivity of MOOCs, it is essential to gain a deeper understanding of course characteristics and learner behaviors in varied educational and cultural settings. This descriptive study compares two distinct MOOC platforms: MITx, a large academic initiative from the United States, and Bilgeİş, a smaller professional development platform from Turkey. The aim is to explore how MOOCs contribute to educational equity, access, and opportunity. The analysis draws on descriptive statistics from 122 MITx courses (with 2.8 million learners) and 100 Bilgeİş courses (with 100,000 learners), focusing on course topics, difficulty levels, and learner demographics such as age, gender, and education level. Findings reveal persistent inequalities in learner participation, particularly by gender and educational background. As MOOCs mature, they appear to attract a broader range of learners, including individuals with lower levels of formal education and older age groups. This trend highlights the potential of MOOCs to serve as inclusive learning environments that support lifelong learning and workforce development. The study underscores the need for standardized metadata frameworks to enable more consistent cross-platform comparisons and recommends regular evaluations to help providers tailor course design and content distribution in ways that promote equitable educational access.

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsMartin, Christopher. The Right to Higher Education: A Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 272. $74.00 (cloth).Jennifer MortonJennifer MortonUniversity of Pennsylvania Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHigher education is in a moment of crisis. The promise of a college degree as a vehicle of upward mobility has met a reality that seems to reinforce rather than redistribute inequalities. The ballooning costs of colleges and universities leave too many students—mostly low-income and working-class students—saddled with massive debt and, in the worst cases, no degree. Activists calling for “free college” insist that higher education ought to be a universal right on a par with compulsory K–12 education. But this plea has been met with skepticism by higher education scholars, many of whom tend to see the issues saddling the sector as those of distribution, completion, and access (William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009], pt. 2). These scholars argue that free higher education mostly benefits those students who are already on the path to college—middle-class and upper middle-class students—rather than those who are the worst off—for example, students who will not complete high school. Despite the truth of this claim, I share Christopher Martin’s frustration with the way this kind of argument normatively flattens the value of higher education. Higher education offers many students an opportunity to cultivate new values, relationships, and talents that will reshape who they are. When we focus solely on distribution, we miss out on having a genuinely rich conversation about the value of higher education.Christopher Martin’s ambitious book rejects the narrow focus on distribution. Instead, aligning with activists who call for free college, he lays out a philosophically careful argument in support of higher education as a universal right. Martin is well aware that his argument runs counter to the received view among scholars of higher education who sharply distinguish between compulsory K–12 education, which is seen as a matter of right, and postsecondary education, which is seen as a matter of choice. Colleges and universities tend to view themselves as part of a market catering to families and young adults who are choosing to pursue higher education for individual, idiosyncratic goals. However, unlike other consumer markets, the benefits individuals reap from higher education build on and reinforce inequalities that take shape early in a person’s life, threatening equality of opportunity. For this reason, we see it as permissible for the government to fund higher education and to have some say in its distribution. These two interests—consumer sovereignty and distributive fairness—have dominated how we think about higher education, Martin argues. The problem, he claims, is that this way of thinking about higher education relies on a very narrow view of individual autonomy—the consumer making choices from which they will benefit, potentially unfairly. As I will suggest later on, there is another diagnosis we might offer—higher education is generally too focused on understanding its role through the lens of the educational goods it offers individuals, ignoring the many other kinds of goods it can offer communities.In chapter 2 Martin considers civic arguments for higher education that develop an alternative to the individual autonomy-based argument he favors. Civic arguments for state-provided education typically turn on two ideas. The first is that education is necessary to ensure the autonomy of future citizens. The second is that education is a public good insofar as educated citizens contribute to our society in a myriad of ways. What scholars call the convergence thesis posits that education can jointly satisfy these two aims. Consequently, the state can compel and should provide education for future citizens. The problem, Martin argues, is that in the case of adults, the convergence thesis falls apart. Adults should be free to choose whether to engage in higher education and what kind of education to pursue. To insist otherwise runs afoul of a central liberal commitment to respecting citizen’s autonomy.Chapters 3 and 4 lay out the central tenets of Martin’s autonomy-based argument for higher education as a right. Martin argues that “citizens have an individual and equal interest in access to post-secondary education” over the course of their life (70). Martin’s argument relies on two important claims. The first is a widely accepted tenet of liberalism—autonomy is essential to flourishing. The second is that education can promote autonomy over the course of a person’s life, not just in the childhood years. Education instills the internal conditions necessary for pursuing a conception of the good, but it also can create environments that support that pursuit over a lifetime. It is the second half of this claim that is central to Martin’s novel theory of higher education as a right.Compulsory K–12 education offers students many of the internal conditions critical to autonomy, but a high school diploma does not transform a student from a nonautonomous being into a fully autonomous one. Once we notice the oddity of thinking of autonomy as a capacity that doesn’t need sustaining over time, Martin argues, we can start to appreciate the limitations of our current way of thinking about the role of postsecondary educational institutions. Martin claims that the environment is critical to supporting the development of autonomy. Postsecondary education, he says, has a critical role to play in creating such an environment. It offers students not just paths to employment but also opportunities to develop their talents, gain knowledge, and encounter values that they might not have previously encountered. Thus, postsecondary education has a critical role in sustaining our autonomy.Note, however, that if we accept Martin’s autonomy-promoting argument, it’s not clear, as he himself acknowledges, that higher education as traditionally conceived is the only or even primary vehicle through which to support adult education. That is, universities and colleges will be but a part, potentially a very small one, of a postsecondary educational sector that supports diverse ways of life. Vocational schools, art schools, and nondegree programs targeting retirees should all play a role in an educational system that is autonomy maximizing. Under Martin’s view, the retiree who hopes to learn more about philosophy and the low-income student who wants to achieve socioeconomic mobility through education both have a claim to postsecondary education.Martin’s account of higher education offers a welcome departure from the labor-market-focused discussion of higher education to which we have become accustomed. He supports a postsecondary education sector guided by the goal of giving all citizens “access to social forms and practices … that run broader than labor market access” (116). This means that the state would exert control over the postsecondary sector to make sure that it not only focuses on responding to labor market incentives but also offers a variety of paths for adults of all ages to pursue. As Martin notes in chapter 5, postsecondary education is a basic right because of the critical role it plays in enabling citizens to pursue a wide variety of ways of life. He argues that this means that the state ought to have significant authority in shaping the opportunities it offers its citizens.This argument would seem to cut against the institutional independence that scholars have typically thought colleges and universities enjoy. Martin accepts this claim but also suggests that it is compatible with colleges and universities enjoying a great deal of authority over their internal affairs. However, according to Martin, the state can interfere to make sure that the sector is not catering exclusively to a too-narrow range of values. The vision of higher education as a right guaranteed by the state is attractive on several fronts, but it leads inevitably to the question we cannot seem to avoid when discussing higher education—who pays?In chapter 6, Martin argues that postsecondary education should be paid for by all of us and thus should be free. His argument is quite simple—financial barriers undermine autonomy. They distort the choices students make in pursuing higher education—whether to attend and what paths to pursue in college and beyond. Debt, in particular, undermines graduates’ capacity to pursue the lives they want. But what about the wealthy? Shouldn’t they at least pay for their education? Martin’s response here is indicative of the broader vision underlying the right to higher education. He argues that if we ask the rich to pay, we, in effect, give them a free pass from “being a full party to [the] liberal social vision” (183) that underlies the right to postsecondary education. The system of higher education we are considering would be a part of the basic structure of autonomy-supporting institutions that all of us can enjoy. This system generates moral obligations for all of us to be citizens that contribute to the common good. Martin suggests that if we allow some in our society to see education as a good for which they are paying, then this would let them “off the hook” from being a party to the moral reciprocity on which the system depends. Many will not find this argument satisfying, but it is consistent with the radical rethinking of the role of higher education proposed by this book.For Martin the right to higher education is akin to the right to health care. Even though some of us use health care more than others, we all (theoretically) have a right to access health care because of the way in which it supports our ability to lead good, flourishing lives. In health care systems like that of Canada, where Martin is based, everyone contributes to the health care system irrespective of need, and everyone is entitled to make use of it irrespective of their ability to pay. Many would balk at the idea that higher education should be seen in this way. It is, after all, not strictly necessary in the way that health care is. Everyone does eventually need to avail themselves of the doctor, but many people have led good, flourishing lives and never interacted with the system of higher education.However, one cannot deny that higher education is an institution that increasingly affects us all, even those who don’t choose to participate in it. The higher education sector plays an enormous role in the labor market; policy decisions; educating our bosses, lawyers, doctors, and politicians; and producing the knowledge on which our society runs. We might not all want to participate in it as students, but there is a strong claim to be made that we all ought to be invested in how it functions. Along these lines, as much as I admire Martin’s careful and compelling argument, I think that it is a mistake to rest the justification for a robust system of postsecondary education on individual autonomy. By doing so, we fail to understand that colleges, universities, vocational schools, community colleges, and the like are not just education institutions but ones that play important civic, cultural, and economic roles in the communities in which they are located.Consider, for example, the problem of educational deserts. In some rural communities, access to higher education is limited, as is access to a variety of well-paying, stable employment opportunities. This can push young people to seek educational and career opportunities elsewhere (Robert Wuthnow, The Left Behind [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018]). As I have argued in previous work (Jennifer Morton, Moving Up Without Losing Your Way [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019]), this dynamic leads to potential costs to the ethical life of those communities. When young people see the incentives of moving far from home, those communities lose valuable members. For example, one might make it easier for young people in a rural community to access higher education by offering free tuition, travel, and admission to existing colleges and universities far from home. Some students might not take up those opportunities, preferring to stay close to home, but many will, and if all goes well, they’ll find that this path leads to the flourishing lives they envisioned elsewhere. The autonomy of the fortunate students is enabled by this intervention, but the conditions for flourishing in the community that they leave behind are not.Would increasing access to postsecondary education in this community enable those who stay there to lead more autonomous lives? One might argue that it would insofar as it would offer those people who want higher education access closer to home. The knowledge and skills that they will now have access to will open up different pursuits, thus increasing their autonomy. This might be a very small cohort, however, and the intervention—a new postsecondary institution—could be quite costly. What about those citizens whose autonomy would be more meaningfully increased by better working conditions or a more generous safety net? When we consider cost, it might seem to make more sense to make it less expensive for young people to leave home than to bring postsecondary education to their communities. However, if we broaden our thinking beyond the benefit to those individuals who are seeking education as a means to pursuing their interests and goals, we see that institutions of higher education can do more for the public good. It can also improve communities.In many cities, including my own, universities and colleges are among the largest employers and own vast swathes of property. These institutions play an outsized role in shaping the residential neighborhoods around them, including funding public schools and the arts, creating employment, and a myriad of other goods that affect the lives of community members in ways that go beyond the educational benefits they confer on students. When these institutions are private, they exercise this power with little government oversight. I agree with Martin that the civic argument in favor of higher education falls short when we narrow our thinking to the civic benefit that graduates will generate when we respect their autonomy. However, this doesn’t require that we give up on evaluating institutions of higher education using a civic lens: perhaps we should think of them not only as educational institutions but also as employers, landowners, and entities with immense political power. This isn’t true of all institutions of higher education, of course, but even a community college in a small town is positioned to further important civic goals. The fact that many are not able to do so because of a lack of financial support is a missed opportunity.The crisis in higher education is not only limited to access or cost; it also involves how we are perceived outside of our institutional walls. There is increasing skepticism of colleges and universities, the expertise we produce, and our social value. To regain our place as a vital institution, we need to reorient the postsecondary sector toward serving the public good more broadly, not just to serving our students and colleagues. Still, Martin’s carefully argued book is a welcome contribution to helping us reimagine the place of higher education in an increasingly unequal and fractured world. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 133, Number 2January 2023 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/722129 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

This article briefly traces the history of the programs and provides evidence of their effectiveness in closing educational opportunity gaps in U.S. society. It also examines the criteria for participation in programs, focusing on the evolving definitions of educational disadvantagement relative to eligibility. In looking at TRIO's Upward Bound program specifically, the article presents a synopsis of over 30 years of research and program evaluations of this initiative, along with recommendations for improving Upward Bound's effectiveness. A HiSTORY OF THE PROGRAMS In August 1964, in the midst of his administration's War on Poverty, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act. This legislation gave rise to the Office of Economic Opportunity and its Special Programs for Students from Disadvantaged Backgrounds or, as they have since become more commonly known, the nation's programs. As part of this statute, the first initiative, Upward Bound, came into existence, followed soon thereafter by Talent Search, which was created by the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965. When the HEA was first reauthorized in 1968, it established TRIO's Student Support Services program and transferred all of from the Office of Economic Opportunity to the Office of Higher Education Programs. When the HEA was reauthorized in 1972, the fourth program, Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC), was created. The expansion of TRIO's reach and outreach continued in 1976 with the creation of the Staff and Leadership Training Authority (SLTA). The fifth program, the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, was created in 1986. Most recently, in 1990, the U.S. Department of Education created the Upward Bound Math/ Science Program, which is administered under the same regulations as other Upward Bound programs. Participation Criteria According to Wolanin (1996), the reauthorization of the HEA in 1980 was particularly important, and philosophically, for the adoption of two key concepts regarding eligibility for participation in programs. The first of these was consideration of students' status as the first in their families to pursue higher education (first-generation-college students or candidates). The second was consideration of students' performance. The first-generation-college criterion was important as a determinant of educational disadvantagement, Wolanin notes, because it shifted eligibility requirements in a more encompassing direction by looking at the origin and impact of nonfinancial barriers to access and success in postsecondary education. Politically, this new stance empowered advocates to build a comprehensive coalition in Congress, not just of elected officials whose constituents were poor people but of those whose constituents had been denied opportunities for or otherwise deterred from postsecondary education. Regarding the performance criterion, Wolanin maintains that it is even more important core concept of TRIO, both philosophically and politically (p. 1). Philosophically, he contends, this focus means that programs are not demonstration programs; rather, they are integral part of student aid (p. 1). Politically, Wolanin states, prior performance has facilitated the development of an extensive cadre of experienced professionals who have gained a political sophistication and experience that has enabled them to become a nationwide network of people able to protect and expand TRIO (p. 1). Much controversy has been generated over the past few decades about definitions of educational disadvantagement relative to program eligibility. The first group to evaluate Upward Bound, the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), was able to circumvent this controversy by selecting a definition that describes these individuals as members of groups that historically have been underrepresented in higher education and that are below national averages on educational indices (Kendrick & Thomas, 1970). …

Educational and training opportunities provide individuals with many options when it comes to building their knowledge base. Both formal and informal educational opportunities are available in many different formats, including face-to-face and online delivery methods. The purpose of this study was to examine the type of education and training opportunities in which Nebraska agricultural employees participate and their satisfaction with different delivery formats. The specific objectives of this study were to determine 1) the type of education or training programs rural agricultural employees have participated in over the last two years, and 2) the differences between attitudes toward face-to-face versus online education and training approaches. In general, results indicated that agricultural professionals participated in face-to-face training and training related to their job more often than other types of training. They also tended to be more satisfied with face-to-face training than online training. As educators develop programming for agricultural professionals, these findings may be helpful in designing high impact educational opportunities.

The paper presents the study of the educational context and its characteristics to achieve the most effective learning process.The aim of the research is to examine the perception of physical space in the traditional classroom and virtual space in online learning. The study of this issue is based on the psychological approach to the perception of virtual space as a model of physical space and on understanding the importance of this research area due to the development of distant forms of learning: though, the problems of virtual space functioning in the perception of students and its impact on learning efficiency still remain unexplored. Meanwhile, understanding the mechanism of space perception can help to adapt the learning process to the form of learning in choice: learning in a traditional classroom, where students work in a real physical space, learning in a virtual environment or in a hybrid form.Materials and methods. The theoretical basis for comparing the characteristics of physical and virtual space is the studies that focus on the importance of spatial organization in the process of learning. The psychological approach to the perception of space makes it possible to rely on the mechanism of transferring the physical characteristics of space into a virtual environment and to determine the possibility of comparison, primarily in an axiological sense. The study was carried out in the context of university education. Students of a higher educational institution were offered a questionnaire, the results of which were processed using a statistical method. Quantitative trends were then interpreted in the application to the learning process. The experiment was carried out in three stages (questionnaire, statistical processing, interpretation of the results), each of which revealed new aspects of the problem under study.Results. The study shows that there is a metaphorization mechanism that allows the learner to perceive the space of the virtual classroom in the same terms as the physical space of the traditional classroom. At the same time, the comparison of statistical data indicates the obvious differences in the perception of the student's space in the traditional and virtual classrooms. This is especially true for such parameters as openness, freedom of movement and the ratio of participants in the educational space, which indicates different learning conditions that determine the choice of teaching methods and techniques in the traditional context and in the virtual educational environment. Discussion of the results of statistical analysis allows us to draw conclusions about the difference of educational potential of the virtual and physical classroom spaces, the importance of socialization and various methods of its creation in the educational process.Conclusion. The conducted research shows the need for further study of space in the educational context, the need to take into account its parameters for developing virtual courses. Also, the results of the study show the importance of spatial characteristics for the success of learning, for creating a comfortable educational environment. The data obtained can be used in the development and improvement of online courses; it will help to avoid mistakes when in planning.

Unlocking Global Potential: Education and Funding Opportunities for International Trainees in Hematology

Recently, reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have been applied to a wide range of control problems in accelerator commissioning. In order to achieve efficient and fast control, these algorithms need to be highly efficient, so as to minimize the online training time. In this paper, we incorporated the beam position monitor trend into the observation space of the twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm and trained two different structure agents, one based on physical prior knowledge and the other using the original TD3 network architecture. Both of the agents exhibit strong robustness in the simulated environment. The effectiveness of the agent based on physical prior knowledge has been validated in a real accelerator. Results show that the agent can overcome the difference between simulated and real accelerator environments. Once the training is completed in the simulated environment, the agent can be directly applied to the real accelerator without any online training process. The RL agent is deployed to the medium energy beam transport section of China Accelerator Facility for Superheavy Elements. Fast and automatic orbit correction is being tested with up to ten degrees of freedom. The experimental results show that the agents can correct the orbit to within 1 mm. Moreover, due to the strong robustness of the agent, when a trained agent is applied to different lattices of different particles, the orbit correction can still be completed. Since there are no online data collection and training processes, all online corrections are done within 30 s. This paper shows that, as long as the robustness of the RL algorithm is sufficient, the offline learning agents can be directly applied to online correction, which will greatly improve the efficiency of orbit correction. Such an approach to RL may find promising applications in other areas of accelerator commissioning.

The integration of online technologies in educational practice is rendering new opportunities for teaching and learning. It is known that instructors who have taught fully online courses have acquired new skills and have had the opportunity to implement novel pedagogical practices in the online environment. However, it is unclear whether direct exposure to fully online teaching facilitates the integration of technology in traditional classrooms. This qualitative investigation examined the transfer of four experienced faculty members’ pedagogical practices from online to face-to-face teaching. Results of this case study show that (a) the instructors’ online teaching experience influenced their perceptions and understanding of online pedagogical strategies, and (b) the transfer of pedagogical strategies back to the classroom is a complex process influenced by the instructors’ teaching style, satisfaction with working in the online environment, and the similarity of content and context between online and face-to-face courses. These findings have the potential to inform innovations in faculty training and development and to promote further research in this area.

“Although an abundance of policy research exists on undocumented students and the policy environment surrounding their access to education, little policy analysis exists on the topic. To address this lack of policy analysis, this article poses the question: In a framework based on feasibility, social equity, and potential economic outcomes, what are the benefits, drawbacks, and costs of policies to extend financial support to undocumented students? To answer this question I first review the arguments that supporters and critics have used to expand and restrict college access for undocumented students in the United States. Next, I analyze the policy background that governs undocumented students‟ access to postsecondary education and financial aid in the United States. I use a significant amount of legal scholarship in this analysis because the status of undocumented students in the United States is predicated on the U.S. Supreme Court case Plyer v. Doe and two federal statutes, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (Pub.L. 104-208) and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Pub.L. 104-193).”

Mobile learning (M-learning) via smart devices represents one of the most important E-learning environments at institutions of higher education. It provides access to education on smart devices through a wide range of mobile networks, and provides the opportunity to learn regardless of time and place. This is in contrast to E-learning services that depend on a specific location for the learning process. The aim of this research is to determine what the requirements are for increasing the acceptance of M-learning in general, and to determine the requirements of students at higher education institutions, in particular, for accepting learning via smart devices. There are shortages to be addressed in educational opportunities and quality for Saudi communities that require a high level of privacy and separation of genders in education (Garg, 2013; Sarrab et al., 2014). According to the Ministry of Education (MOE) Policy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), gender segregation in education reflects the country’s religious and traditional values as well as the national policy in general (MOE, 2013, No. 155). Thus, several opportunities would help the target audience to more readily accept learning applications in the Saudi Arabian community. As well, the communities can expand their knowledge while still maintaining the government policy associated with religious values and the separation of gender in all levels of education; males and females can exchange and share their information easily through the electronic framework without breaking religious restrictions in the Saudi society. The KSA is in the process of digital transformation. Most government agencies operate within the new Vision 2030, which requires them to accept and deal with this transformation easily and effectively. One of these agencies is the MOE. Therefore, the research focus for this study is on aspects of learning and the distribution of knowledge among students themselves, within the digital environment, and not between students and their teachers in the class. This study adopts and modifies the theoretical framework of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), as per many of the previous studies that have been conducted in this field. It adds to the UTAUT a new construct, called application quality requirements, which is composed of requirements for system quality, information quality, and interface quality. Many research studies about approaches to the acceptance of E-learning were conducted in Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2015. Many of these previous studies have focused on the factors influencing M-learning accepting in KSA; however, there is a shortage of the main practical requirements that can be influenced by particular societies or traditional requirements that are related to the KSA community background. By using the UTAUT model, we address the gaps in the current research by identifying the practical requirements of our target audience that help us to determine the best practices in M-learning. Therefore, our research question is: “From an end user’s perspective, how do the unique requirements of KSA society with respect to M‐learning environments increase the acceptance of such innovations in higher education?” The number of distance-learning students at Saudi universities has gradually increased over the past five years. The recently established Saudi Electronic University has an ambitious plan to reach 100,000 students over the next five years. Its stakeholders face a major challenge in the distance-learning field, especially with regard to learning via smart devices; they are therefore interested in the positive performance of M-learning at existing Saudi universities. In addition, the rise of smartphones in Saudi society dramatically demonstrates how it has made a fundamental choice in favor of smart devices. According to a 2015 eMarketer report, Saudi Arabia has the third highest percentage of smartphone users with regard to the total population of smartphone use. Thus, it is useful to pay particular attention to the requirements of students at universities and other academic institutions in order to understand and design an acceptable framework for creating learning materials delivered via smart devices.