Cloud Computing: New Opportunities and Challenges for Education

Despite the evident educational potential of new and emerging technology, high cost does not allow all institutions to actually achieve the envisaged technology-supported innovation in pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment. Cost concern also tends to lead to unequal opportunities and sharp disparities in the availability of higher education for all those who desire for it. Cloud computing is poised to revolutionize the way higher education institutions deliver education. This paper seeks to provide an overview of cloud computing, explores the challenges around cloud computing, details the significant benefits that it can bring to higher education and discusses how organizations could harness cloud services to significantly reduce capital and maintenance costs on educational technology. The chapter further recommends the use of hybrid cloud deployment to achieve a balance between risks and benefits of this new computing paradigm.