The Impact of ICT-Based Education on Educational Justice Development

ICT-based education is the application of information and communication technologies in the process of teaching and learning. Educational justice can be defined as providing equal educational opportunities for all demanders of higher education. Educational justice can be achieved by ICT-based education through; providing equal educational opportunities, increasing the access to higher education and improving the quality of education. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of ICT-based education on educational justice development. Therefore, the ex post-facto research method was adopted, and the statistical population covered 250 and 110 students benefitting from ICT-based and classroom-based educations, respectively. 104 ICT-based and 100 classroom-based students were also randomly selected as the sample volume. Data were collected through two researcher-made questionnaires whose content validity was approved by the supervisor and consulting advisor of the research. Their reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient as 0.89. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the collected data, and t-test was used to test the hypotheses and investigate the difference between the groups. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS software. The analysis of the data showed that all the hypotheses of the research were confirmed with a level of confidence of 95 per cent. Research findings also revealed that ICT-based education had the highest impact on increasing access to higher education by providing the opportunity of studying at home, expanding classroom borders and facilitating studying for jobholders. Its high expenses in Iran were, however, the most important obstacle for equal educational opportunities and increasing access to higher education.