The University of British Columbia and the Monterrey Institute of Technology set out to meet the challenging requirements of international information technology-based distance education in 1997 when they signed a collaborative agreement to develop a set of five courses in the area of technology-based distributed learning. This paper is an account…

A visit to India to gather information on the INSAT-1B satellite project for the purpose of identifying the main issues involved in using satellites for education and teaching purposes, with respect to potential Open University of Great Britain involvement is outlined in this report. Organizations visited and individuals interviewed are…

This paper discusses challenges to the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) in using technology. The first section deals with external challenges to EADTU institutions, including competition from new services, new funding programs, pressure from national governments, and the Europeanization of education. Internal…

The JANUS (Joint Academic Network Using Satellite) satellite network is being planned to link European institutions wishing to jointly produce distance teaching materials. Earth stations with capabilities for transmit/receive functions, voice/data functions, two 64 kbs channels, and connection to local telephone exchange and computer networks will…

Teaching functions for which television, radio, and audiocassettes are particularly appropriate are considered, based on the use of broadcasting at the Open University. Television is useful for the following purposes: to demonstrate experiments or experimental situations; to illustrate principles involving dynamic change or movement; to illustrate…

The Open University from its inception in 1969 has been a technologically based university. It uses technology to deliver high quality, specially designed teaching materials to large numbers of adult students throughout Britain, and increasingly abroad, who study at home. The Open University's teaching system has remained basically unchanged since…

This position paper explores the potential of new technology to radically alter both distance education and conventional higher education. It hypothesizes that technological developments could even lead to the demise of the conventional campus-based higher education institution by the year 2000. Instead, people of all ages would be able to study…

This paper describes how audiovisual media have influenced the way students have learned--or failed to learn--at the Open University at Walton Hall. The paper is based in part on results from a large body of research that has repeatedly demonstrated the interrelatedness of a wide range of factors in determining how or what students learn from…

Resulting from a 1980 workshop and a survey of 12 selected distance learning systems (or correspondence study programs), this paper had four aims: (1) to provide a framework to describe distance learning systems using audiovisual media and to locate the 12 surveyed institutions within that framework, (2) to identify common problem areas in the…

Adult illiteracy is a worldwide problem. Illiterate adults are the most difficult to teach and to reach because illiteracy is characterized by embarrassment and low self-esteem. Given that radio is heavily used by lower income and less educated people, literacy projects utilizing radio were attempted in 40 countries between 1960 and 1974. The main…