| Abstract | As a reputed international institution in Thailand, and also in Asia, Asian Institute of
Technology (AIT) would like to establish the virtual university and/or distance education
system to widely provide education to other neighboring countries, patiicularly in South-East
Asia. However, with regard to the scarce resources problem, the decentralization of existing
conventional face-to-face system makes difficulties to faculty and staff in terms of traveling
stress problems, particularly in Industrial Systems Engineering Program (ISE). Moreover, ISE
faculty and visiting faculty have to travel to AIT/CV Vietnam, at least two persons per term,
and travel back to AIT Bangkok alternately during a term period. Consequently, during the
absences of faculty, for example, at AIT Bangkok, interactions, consultations, and advises
between the instructor and his advisees are severely affected. This problem makes the
educational system less effective and less efficient, particularly during examination periods.
The inadequacy of resource person problem can be solved by distance education system, with
two-way interactive mode, and utilization of the recently developed telecommunication and
information technologies.
The financial feasibility and cost estimation of the investment have to be evaluated
before the consensus of investment decision making. Furthermore, the advantages and
disadvantages of distance education compared to conventional system have to be determined
subject to some criteria concerning with educational project evaluation in order to find the
public opinions, in Thailand.
The result of financial analysis, conducted in this study, obviously expresses the cost
effectiveness of distance learning programs compared to conventional classrooms, based on
ISE program, in terms of cost savings from reduction of face-to-face lecture hours, reduction
of traveling expenditures, and reduction of faculty and staff.
The evaluation, concerning with educational project, is synthesized by Expert Choice
software based on Analytic Hierarchy Process. The two systems, the conventional and the
distance education, are compared on qualitative factors also. Important factors, such as,
quality assurance of education, cost effectiveness, are identified and their relative importance
are compared. Based on the weights derived for these factors, the two systems are evaluated
by conducting survey among groups of potential stakeholders. The results indicate that the
distance education system has a very slight advantage at 51 % to 49% over the conventional
system. |