The primary objective of this research is to ascertain the manner in which higher education institutions offering open and distance education incorporate the concept of openness into their vision, mission, core values, and tactics. This study employs a descriptive research design to ascertain the current state of affairs. The research methodology…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify staff skills and competencies on which Chinese open universities should focus their professional development activities in order to enhance the quality of open and distance learning (ODL) in China. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from surveys of 220 academic and academic-related…

Due to tremendous reception on digital learning platforms, many online users tend to register for online courses in MOOC offered by many prestigious universities all over the world and gain a lot on cutting edge technologies in niche courses. As the reception of online courses is increasing on one side, there have been huge dropouts of…

This report and the accompanying online repository (https://sfdora.org/dora-case-studies/) bring together and analyse case studies in responsible academic career assessment. The case studies are intended to serve as inspiration for institutions planning to become or already engaged in a complex review process, and to provide potential pathways of…

Open and distance education has been playing an important role in China's development of higher education and lifelong learning. In 2012, the Chinese government approved six large-scale radio and television universities (RTVUs) to become open universities (OUs), including the Open University of China (OUC), Beijing Open University (BJOU), Shanghai…

With the development of online learning, LMSs accumulated huge amounts of students' interaction data. Unfortunately, with the support of LMSs data, few researchers put a sight on interaction research in MPOCs. Particularly, comparing interaction activity patterns of different achievement student groups and in different course processes in MPOCs…

Like all organisations, good governance is a fundamental requirement for the responsible and accountable management of universities in general and open universities in particular. This is to ensure that these (open) universities remain relevant to their mission of facilitating unfettered access to higher education for citizens and at the same time…

Chinese education has a long history, and the Chinese higher education system is the largest in the world, but open universities in China are not at the same level as they are in developed countries. This article provides an overview of the recent development in the open universities system in China. Specifically, the article discusses the…

This study aims to identify the priority of the roles and competencies of tutors working in the e-learning environments where the tutors are experiencing the changes brought by reforming traditional TV and broadcasting university to open universities. The mixed methods, DACUM, non-participatory observation, and questionnaires were used to identify…

Much research has been conducted in the area of teacher professional identity in the past decades. Nonetheless, very little attention has been paid to the professional identity of tutors in distance education. Using interviews, this study set out to investigate distance tutors' claimed and assigned professional identities, their actual, ought and…

The national open universities of China and India are unique adaptations of the open university model that emanated from the UK. These institutions have expanded to become the largest universities in the world as measured by current enrollment of approximately four million each. This article comparatively analyzes how these open universities have…

The recent developments within open educational resources (OERs) and open licensing have generated considerable interest among distance educators since open and distance learning is supposed to be the largest consumer/user of and contributor to OER. In China, given the policy of development and use of elaborate courses, conversion of radio and…

Research into motivation in education mainly centres on students' learning motivation. This article reports on an interview study of teacher motivation with the aim of investigating the effects of student-related factors and tutors' personal factors on the motivation of language tutors in the distance learning context. Findings from the study…

In the process of building a learning society in China, the government has paid more and more attention to education in communities. Community education is oriented towards all social members of society and offers a vast space for the popularization of music education. China's open universities are able to provide a learning platform and…

Open universities have emerged as an innovative pillar in the expansion of access to higher education participation, with single-mode distance education providers broadening access in many countries through economies of scale supported by large enrolments. These models raise questions about the quality of education provided. This paper reports on…