Normal practice in course and text book construction is to provide learners with pre-selected material chosen by the authors to illustrate a pre-determined grammar, content or teaching syllabus. This paper will discuss the effect of the reversal of this process at a pilot workshop session in which learners themselves were invited to select the…

This paper examines the contention that learning environments which use IMS Learning Designs can be created by plugging in different components, using generic service descriptions to create the interface between the Learning Design (LD) and the specific tools. There is an alternative viewpoint which claims that generic service descriptions cannot…

Instructional systems, both distance education and campus-based, may be viewed in terms of intrapersonal and interpersonal "instructional dialogues," that mediate and facilitate learning respectively, and "instructional resources" that enable such dialogues. Resources include self-instruction texts, tutorials, instructor…

This publication consists of a set of case studies of quality assurance practices in distance teaching universities. The case studies are particularly relevant at a time when universities in many parts of the world, both new and established distance teaching universities, are placing great emphasis on reviewing and revising what they do in…

This case study of historical research on the topic of higher education focuses on the history of postsecondary distance education in an industrialized nation. The social history of the Open Learning Institute (OLI) of British Columbia is used to analyze how a new higher education institution establishes itself in its community, the consequences…

This report is the outcome of a regional workshop on development of science, technology and outreach courses held at Sri Lanka Foundation Institute in Colombo. The workshop emanated from UNESCO's commitment and continued effort to promote cooperation among the distance teaching universities in the region through the sharing of their experience and…

This brief report on a visit to Athabasca University, a distance education institution in Alberta (Canada), and ACCESS-Alberta, an educational communications system, indicates the numbers and types of courses offered by the University, and describes the types of media used in the program. These types of media include: print-based, telephone…

This survey questioned almost 6,000 students concerning media use for 16 new and seven continuing courses at the British Open University. Student access to and use of various types of media are detailed, and helpfulness, irrelevance, and difficulty ratings for various components and services in the new courses are presented. Brief feedback…

This report on the organization, development, and dissemination of educational and commercial radio and television programs by the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company includes some of the research being done at the Open University. A planned reorganization of Sveriges Radio into two separate television channels and several channels for local…

Examination of the Open University's use of educational broadcasting indicates that it is a valuable resource but a continued emphasis on the hardware, together with a failure to recognize the problems which users may face, will mean that in many cases the results will not match the expectations. The emphasis is too often placed on the hardware…

Telephone conferencing can be used to solve communication problems in correspondence education. Technical problems have largely been resolved, and programs like the Educational Telephone Network (ETN) at the University of Wisconsin Extension have effectively used telephones to deliver instruction to remote classrooms. The success of such…

This document, reporting on a visit to the University Without Walls (UWW) of the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, opens with a definition of the Union. When the Union applied for Correspondent Status in the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, it was agreed that the decision should be based on the…

The Open University in Great Britain has been experimenting on a limited scale with the use of telephone conferencing to reach disadvantaged and handicapped students. (JY)

Many educational institutions are developing or expanding open and distance learning (ODL) programs, and all face difficulties ensuring that teaching materials of the right quality are developed on time. This report examines solutions to the problem, focusing on training, policies, and management structures that encourage timely development of…

An overview of the Open Universitie's graduate courses and the potential for growth within the program. (HB)