There is surprisingly little analysis of the employment and earnings impact on students of taking and completing Internet-based programs and of how it compares with earnings outcomes for graduates of face-to-face universities. This paper analyzes a follow-up survey of students who began attending the virtual Internet-based Open University of…

Open Distance Learning (ODL) provides learners with the greatest possible control over time, place and pace of education. The educational delivery of ODL has improved greatly over the years with growing number of students continuously enrolling into various ODL programs globally. ODL however does come with issues and problems. Loss of student…

We maintain that an understanding of the working contexts of staff is a critical consideration when designing for effective professional development. The process of embedding theory into good practice does not simply depend on the design of a good seminar, because it may also be affected by who else attends, or perhaps by who the participants talk…

This article provides an update of the Digital Learners in Higher Education Research project. In Phase 1 of the project, concluded that there is no empirically-sound basis for most of the claims that have been made about the net generation. It also found there are no meaningful differences between net generation and non-net generation students at…

Student retention and progression has exercised the HE sector for some time now, and there has been much research into the reasons why students drop out of Higher Education courses. (Allen, 2006; Buglear, 2009;). More recently the Higher Education Academy Grants Programme Briefing (HEFCE, 2010), outlined a number of areas that emergent project…

The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support language teaching and learning in higher education has become standard practice in recent years. While OER initiatives have given considerable attention to teacher's engagement as well as the sharing of culture and the creation and uploading of OERs, there is little evidence about specific…

This paper reports on an empirical and descriptive investigation into how teachers and learners use technology in three prototypical learning activities in a higher educational online learning environment. Additionally, the relationship between the educational uses of technology and the overall educational patterns of interaction between teachers…

This paper presents a case study based on the experiences surrounding a distance-learning module in the area of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that includes a creative multimedia component as an integral part of its teaching and assessment. The module requires that students engage in multimedia production to articulate their…

A major strand of science and technology studies in recent decades has related to the social construction of technology (SCOT) movement, whose adherents maintain that technological systems are determined just as much by social forces as by technological ones. Taking this SCOT notion as a starting point, and putting a focus on the user, this paper…

The introduction of new online technologies in Higher Education brings many challenges for staff, not only in learning new functionality, but in deciding how to use tools in pedagogically effective ways. This case study describes an initiative at the Open University (UK), which set out to provide professional development in the use of an online…

Fully online courses are becoming progressively more popular because of their "anytime anywhere" learning flexibility. One of the ways students interact with each other and with the instructors within fully online learning environments is via asynchronous discussion forums. However, student engagement in online discussion forums does not…

This book, written by authors representing 12 countries and five continents, is a collection of international perspectives on distance learning and distance learning implementations in higher education. The perspectives are presented in the form of practical case studies of distance learning implementations, research studies on teaching and…

There are many reasons why Indian open universities are adding online learning opportunities to their course offerings. Two universities, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU), have been developing online aspects of their programs for some years. This article documents the…

The recent revolution in information technology (IT) has significantly challenged society's perception and thinking about the world in which we live. Because of its many advantages, distance learning has been identified by educators, scholars, academicians, and researchers as one of the most effective ways to improve the quality of learning. This…

This third publication on the theme of quality in the Commonwealth of Learning Perspectives on Distance Education series widens the discussion beyond external quality assurance processes to a more generic focus on a "culture of quality." It is an extension of the earlier two publications, which came out in 1994 and 1997 and drew…