Technology and Academic Success Higher education across the world and the lure of new information technologies has remained uncertain as it is unsettling. While few people doubt information technology has great potential of enhancing teaching and learning there is a wide and general agreement on how technology can and should be used to boost academic productivity or whether this type of increase is on its own a valid goal if its enhancement means that the substitution of technology to take the place of the more traditional and labor intensive forms of higher education. It is not that there is lack of technology in micro scale but there are many examples of new technology applications that abound. Most of the institutions have invested majorly in new technologies, distributing the capacity of computing across most of the campuses creating a link between the faculty and the students as well as with the other students and in general providing the necessary IT infrastructure which is a precondition to the involvement to the faculty (Reichstetter, 2007). College students complete several tasks using these devices such as checking their grades, the use of course management software as well as buying textbooks. Another primary function students use technology for is communication; tablets, phones and computers make it possible to carry out multiple tasks which make it easier for students to reach each other and also their professors.

The demand for IT-based learning and teaching programs has grown substantially or even exponentially and the trend will continue in the years to come. In an

Technology will definitely bring a lot of changes to learning and teaching in a big way no matter the response got from traditional higher education. Technology represents a very big and fundamental change in basic technology of learning and teaching. This transformation will take a long time, long enough for the critics to hold their claims that perhaps higher education can do well without necessarily making any changes in response to new technologies. If the traditional universities and colleges do not use and exploit the new technologies definitely other nontraditional providers of education will definitely embrace the new technologies (Massy, & Zemsky,2009).
We have seen that technology has a great potential in the education sector, however in order for these institutions to reap from the benefits they have to make sure they transform themselves in a very fundamental way. We therefore have to understand these changes in operational and practical terms. This involves exploiting the advantages of using technologies in teaching and learning and thus how technology impacts success in education.

The use of devices such as tablets, laptops and smart phones has become pervasive. According to recent research it has been established that about 86% of college students now own and use laptops while the ownership of smartphones has gone up to about 60%. Clearly this shows how the need for these devices is increasing among students and this has led to colleges providing the infrastructure in order to make them as useful as possible. Technology offers economies of scale in the education institutions in that after a period front end investment the cost of using this technologies by students is expected to be low. Moreover there will be access to large amounts of information for the students for very low incremental costs. This means that there will be a departure from the traditional handicraft models of education whereby the faculty curves of learning when it comes to production of learning are shallow and the available capital only offers very little leverage beyond the traditional physical plant. Secondly technology offers mass customization meaning that the faculty…