Jan 14th. 1999

Screen design:
   M. Fritsch

Most important themes of Distance Education Research

• 1. Micro Didactics
  It is much easier to transform given courses of Distance Education into the WWW when they have been prepared in a way which is typical for high quality DE:
  1) Learning goals explicitly formulated, at least partly in an operationalized way, including measures to find out and improve motivation for the user
  2) structured curriculum decisions with offerings to deviate at certain pivoting points according to individual interests.
  3) regular instances to try out new competencies in practical / virtual settings: practical simulation
  4) regular control of learning outcome in behavioural terms
  5) evaluation of the system of teaching and learning
  
• 2. Practice - orientation of curricula especially for public education:
  the gap between public curricula and the needs for additional training on the job is growing. On the one side industry has to train staff before productive work can start on the other side customers deplore the outdatedness of qualifications received from public formal education
  
• 3. Individualization of the learning process:
  Distance Educdation claims to be an organizational form of education which may ease the process of an individualized curriculum. The roots of DE being the practical notion that controlled learning ("guided didactic conversation"; Holmberg) may be organized by institutions independent of time and place ("the intersubjectivity of teacher and learner, in which learning from teaching occurs, has to be artificially re-created"; Keegan). Many of the big DE institutions offer little individualization for the customer because mass production is the determining factor of cost reduction ("industrialized form of teaching and learning"; Peters). The theory of distance education as an educational environment means today that studies in individualizing the learning path for every single learner by using databases and AI systems ( "teaching as artifice"; Vertecchi) have to be prepared together with the work on micro-didactics (Fritsch) for the mega-systems ("mega-systems"; Daniel).
• 4. Quality Control:
  Quality control of courses and curricula in Distance Education came into the range of interest only because of worldwide competition.
  It should also be discussed under the aspects of sustainability in education - processes of certification , like an European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) which are by definition measures of dequalification of all non-participants, enlarge the gap between "educated" countries and all the others. People collecting qualification certificates and becoming "overweight" while at the same time basic educational opportunities for most poor countries still are not developed. Alphabetization courses and basics in community development should be of more interest than the 234th course in design of modern media.
  
• 5. Documentation of DE worldwide:
  Research in DE is possible only when access to libraries , project reports, research findings of others and a modern media equipment are given to document the changing process of the research field which may be characterized by the velocity of change in basic structures of the educating institutions and driven by external funding prerequisites. The monetary policy does no longer guarantee an organic development. E.g. the tendency to become dependant on worldwide software structures narrows the scope of possible research goals.