This lecture describes the organization and kinds of pedagogical research undertaken in the United Kingdom Open University and, through a case study of educational research in the recently introduced Arts Foundation Course (A102), to show how one type of research can contribute to course organization and development. The Institute of Educational…

Education is the most basic of basic needs. In the Philippines, the performance of the education sector does not fully match its potential. However, education can serve as the catalyst for resolving basic issues and creating economic development. Since high technology is the new resource of the 1990s, a new education strategy is needed. This…

It is argued that because the term "dropout" has different meanings in different systems of distance education, it is difficult to compare dropout rates of two or more distance education universities. Two very different European distance education systems, the FernUniversitat in West Germany and the Swedish system, are examined.…

Abstracts of 72 articles selected from "Teaching at a Distance," numbers 1-24, are provided in this bibliography, which was prepared for an international conference held in Cambridge, England, in September 1983. The following topics related to distance education and counseling at Great Britain's Open University are covered: (1) general…

This report on the use of the computer conferencing system CoSy begins with a summary of its application at the Open University in 1988, and describes the changes made for its use in 1989. An evaluation based on both quantitative statistics of usage and qualitative data from interviews and conference comments is made and compared with results from…

In developing countries, the demand for educational dollars is greater than the supply. Priorities must be selected for open higher education in both methods and subject matter. Developing countries should give a higher priority to vocational education. Since well before World War II, distance education has been available in New Zealand.…

This paper discusses four major developments in the use of media at the Open University: (1) the move from radio to audiocassettes; (2) use of broadcast television vs. videocassettes; (3) increased use of interactive video; and (4) CYCLOPS tutorials, which provide immediate two-way communication via the telephone together with visual pictures.…

This discussion and critique of television programs used in two courses--D102 (vandalism) and M101 (mathematics)--at the British Open University suggests that the television presentation of real life-like raw material can facilitate the comprehension of abstract material inasmuch as it provides concrete illustrations, and provides an opportunity…

The Open College Federation of the North West was initiated in 1975 as a result of an agreement between the University of Lancaster, Nelson and Colne Tertiary College, and the Lancashire Polytechnic. Its aims were to prepare adults for entry into higher education, create a range of intermediate-level courses for adults that were academic but that…

The activities of the Open Learning Institute (OLI) of British Columbia from its inception in the late 1970s through mid-1983 are described. It is noted that the mandate of the OLI was to make available throughout the Canadian province courses and programs to students who were unable or unwilling to take advantage of other educational…

Research studies trying to understand, predict, and control dropout from distance education display various points of view and quite a few build on one another at a conceptual level, but their findings are rarely generalizable outside the situations in which the research is conducted. Although academics claim that new work on dropout should be…

This paper discusses the different methods and levels of evaluation that have been used to evaluate the distance education programs of the Open University of Great Britain. Included in this discussion are system evaluation and course evaluation (both formative and summative), and the results of the evaluation procedures are summarized for each.…

This study investigated the efficiency of video as an additional teaching aid for a statistics course offered by the Fernuniversitat (Open University, West Germany). A total of 65 distance students and internal students from the Universities of Bochum and Dortmund were divided into five groups to test the effects of five alternative treatments:…

Although programmed instruction per se has not been used at the Open University (OU), the principles of programmed instruction have heavily influenced the development of systematic instruction and this paper describes the OU instructional development process in the context of seven principles of programmed instruction developed by Lysaught and…