As background information for a discussion of India's communication system and its potential for social change, this paper briefly describes the country's physical characteristics, some of its cultural heritage and demographics, and the development of its education and railways. After a discussion of the folk media (traditional changes) of…

These papers address the central objective of the conference: to create a better understanding of the societal determinants and educational response to increased demands from adults for greater access to education. The following papers in Part 1 outline some international trends relating to adults in higher education: "The New Policy Arena of…

A Finnish study sought to verify the "exclusiveness theory" of education developed by Randall Collins. The exclusiveness theory proposes that educational requirements and the educational levels required for employment continually increase, not in response to the actual requirements of jobs, but so that the professions can maintain…

The 16 conference papers in this collection describe various ways in which counselling is used in distance education in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Thailand, the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Zambia. Following an introduction by Alan Tait, the following papers are presented: (1) "Counselling in the Open University of the…

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…

Students were surveyed to determine the outcomes of participation in an introductory social science course at the Open University (England). The 18 students were taking their first Open University course, and most had little recent formal education. Many were unsure about their ability to handle the course and did not know what to expect of it.…

Admissions at distance education systems is considered for new students (rather than continuing students). Based on a systems analysis, it is noted that there are three major subsystems to carry out the objective of converting applicants into students: the receipt of applications, the allocation of applicants to first year or introductory courses…

Management principles and trends are examined with attention to open higher education. Administrative activity includes policy-making, technical tasks, and institutional direction. Open higher education includes programs to prepare both professional and semi-skilled workers, as well as programs that meet personal and social aims. Participation in…

The plan for the University of Mid-America to establish the autonomous, fully accredited American Open University (AOU) is presented. AOU, a university for working adults who wish to study part-time, will utilize modern communications technologies and methods of distance education. The American Open University will be a nationwide system that will…

Compiled for internal, practical use by staff members of the Centre for the Study of Education in Developing Countries, this selected bibliography on the educational use of media emphasizes its utilization in nonwestern countries. Some general theoretical literature has been included, especially in the area of audiovisual media, since the…

Three objectives are examined in this report: (1) to outline concisely some of the educational questions that course planning teams may wish to address in the early stages of course planning; (2) to provide a short list of resources, principally from the Open University's Institute of Educational Technology (IET), that may aid in course team…

Open University faculty create their own instructional materials for use in distance teaching. A methodology is described for evaluating the teaching effectiveness of the materials and the teaching methods used. It is applied to a unit of a materials science course written for a specific text. A small group of students in the course was surveyed…

The reason that Great Britain's Open University (OU) students elected to study D101, the Social Science Foundation Course, was studied to discover their aims, expectations, and attitudes to the Open University and the course. Attention is directed to the first interview conducted before the course started to assess student orientations to study,…

The Open University of Great Britain provides home-based instruction via broadcasts and correspondence. Since technical arguments for the superiority of open-network, cable, or cassette television systems are inconclusive, the university has been forced to develop a decision-making model to determine which system is the most cost effective. For…

The Open University of Great Britain relies heavily on broadcasting as a mode of instruction, but increased course offerings are making it impossible to broadcast each lesson more than once. To reach students unable to view the original broadcast, video cassette reorder systems were tested in six community study centers as part of a 1974 pilot…