This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explores…

Upon completion of a graduate level course at the Open University of Israel, one instructor received very high student ratings while the other received very low ratings. We utilized this exceptional situation to perform ad hoc analyses of their course forums. The objective of this study was to map the dialogic behavior that occurred and to create…

This paper presents research on a convenience sample of the Open University of Sri Lanka's engineering faculty. Examined in this research are faculty's opinions on the instructional strategies they use to teach engineering courses at a distance. First, this paper details the pedagogical strategies used by the faculty, which is then followed by an…

The "Technology Outlook Australian Tertiary Education 2013-2018: An NMC Horizon Project Regional Analysis" reflects a collaborative research effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and Open Universities Australia to help inform Australian educational leaders about significant developments in technologies supporting teaching,…

Language teaching has traditionally been a task for teachers to teach vocabulary items and grammatical rules and to explain to students how a foreign language works in reference to their mother tongue. For a long time, language teaching was a means to the end of understanding a written culture. This had two practical corollaries: to grade the…

We know assessment plays a major formative role in driving student learning appropriately, but what implications does this have for online courses? Is it more important than in a face to face context, or less so? Should we reconceptualize the ways in which we assess students, or are existing methods, tried and tested in conventional teaching and…

Notes difficulties encountered teaching history in an open university. Describes methodology used in a twentieth-century history course, combining current events with the course content. Using a major continuing news story as the basis for a semester project, students are asked to consider multiple scenarios and to predict outcomes of current…

Describes an open admissions program, a public university's nontraditional population, and their unique academic needs. Provides a political science briefing book assignment in which students research and write about one country. Claims the book is effective in helping students to organize and focus their thoughts and to improve their research and…

Addresses one of three major challenges facing distance education--its claimed overreliance on behaviorist approaches to teaching and learning. Maintains that distance learning encourages students to review their own learning approaches and to be more proactive about their study methods. (CFR)

This book contains 19 papers grouped in three sections that lead the reader through the process of planning, producing, and presenting materials in open and distance learning, based on experience in Great Britain. Following an overview by Roger Lewis, the Planning section contains the following six papers: "Resources and Constraints in Open…

This bibliography for trainers and teachers interested in open or distance learning lists 68 books and articles devoted to particular aspects of the "learning revolution," i.e., arrangements to enable people to learn at the time, place, and pace that satisfy their circumstances and requirements. Materials are listed under 12 headings:…

This paper briefly identifies a number of contemporary pressures for change which condition the way universities will behave and which provide both opportunities and threats for the future; it then goes on to consider the implications for distance education universities. Pressures on universities include such factors as the growth of other…

Reports on a case study of formative evaluation of the materials and procedures used in a distance-learning French-language course. Identifies and evaluates key teaching design features of the draft audiovisual and print packages. Discusses teaching design in relation to revisions made to the course materials. (CFR)

This book is based on training sessions conducted by the author that focused on key issues in the design of self-instructional materials, including an awareness of the distinctive features of self-instructional materials, characteristics of the target audience, and coming to grips with the resources and constraints within which one must work.…

This study examined the student characteristics of Athabasca University (AU), Alberta, Canada, a distance and open university, and asked whether AU serves the student clientele that its mission proposes and to what the AU graduates attribute success. Established to make it possible for people to earn a university education regardless of where they…