D
Figure 3: Educational research as an open -loop system
Theoretical analysis contributes to the development of knowledge in the field of vocational training at a distance from these perspectives:
The characteristic feature of all Open University teaching is that it is at a distance - the courses come to the students in their own homes, or, sometimes, places of work.
Courses are carefully designed to meet the needs of most home-based students. At the heart of most courses are a series of specially produced textbooks (known as 'units' within the OU). These are linked in most cases to other materials: radio and television programmes, audio and videotapes, home experiment kits and computer software.
Although students learn at home, there is plenty of support and human contact available. All registered students have a local tutor and counsellor, whom they can meet along with fellow students at one of the network of some 293 study centres throughout the UK. Elsewhere in Europe similar arrangements are being made where there are sufficient numbers of students.
Students also meet at the residential schools which are an integral part of many OU courses. Every undergraduate student must attend at least one summer school, usually lasting a week; these are held on the campuses of other universities during their long vacation. Many management courses include weekend residential schools.
Definition of the area of educational endeavour and educational research which is the subject of their survey and analysis is necessary for three reasons.
All lectures were cancelled for 1997 in the subject
Database Analysis at Dublin City University.
Database Analysis is a 3rd year undergraduate compulsory
subject in the B.Sc. in computing science in the Faculty of Computer Applications
at the university.
The course has been digitised.
In 1996 it comprised 40 hours of lectures : two hours
on Tuesday mornings, two hours on Thursday afternoons for a term of 10
weeks, plus other activities. It was taught in this format for a number
of years.
For 1997 the lectures have been encoded as digital
audio using Real Audio format and accompanied by a synchronised presentation
of the visual material.
This is presented using WWW browser from any configured
internet site.
The course is password protected on a per-user basis
allowing data to be gathered quantitatively on its use and allowing content
search so the student can move immediately to any theme in the whole course.
This is a hands-on course requiring student database
analysis and construction.
The course enrolment for 1997 is 130 students, 100
full time and 30 part time at the university. Students can take the course
any time, day or evening on campus at any installation or laboratory, or
they can take the course at home at any time of day or night using a modem
and ISP, or they can take the course from their work place.
The course fee, the examination, certificate and award
are unchanged.
One approach for heuristic purposes would be to suggest that three forms of vocational education and training can be identified today.
The perspective of this study is that educational provision at the end of the 1990s is enriched by the availability, for the first time in history, of conventional, distance and virtual systems. Conventional education, which developed well before the Industrial Revolution, continues to flourish in the schools, colleges, training centres and universities of the world today, providing education for hundreds of millions of students.
Born of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 19th century, distance education finally achieved recognition nearly a generation ago after a difficult and sometimes chequered first one hundred years. It flourishes today in open universities, company training centres, distance training colleges and open, flexible and distance departments of conventional institutions, providing education for tens of millions of students.
The breathtaking array of communications technologies produced by the Electronics Revolution of the 1980s made their way into educational provision in the late 1980s, making it possible to teach face-to-face at a distance. Electronic classrooms hundreds or thousands of kilometres apart were linked by compressed video, satellite or full bandwidth linkages into a virtual system.
The provision of education today is enriched by having conventional, distance and virtual systems complementing each other and enriching provision for citizens.
For the purposes of this report the field of distance education is considered to have two parts: distance education and distance training.
Distance training is used in this report for the non-university part of the field that is not directed to children. In German the term is usually Fernunterricht.
In German the university part of the field is usually referred to as Fernstudium. There is no satisfactory English translation for Fernstudium. One has to use clumsy phrases like 'university-level-distance-education' or 'distance-education-at-higher-education-level'.
In this report distance training structures are divided into two groups: official provision, that is wholly or partly provided by tax payers' moneys, and private or proprietary provision. Other divisions and further precisions are possible but are not considered in this report. For some countries proprietary provision is further divided into certified or registered institutions, and those that are not so certified.
Up to 1980 confusion reigned about the concept of distance education. Writers did not make it clear whether they were writing about or not writing about the use of computers in schools or Schools of the Air or rural development projects or technology based training. the result was discourtesy to the reader and lack of progress in distance education research.
An attempt was made to reduce the confusion in 1980 in an article titled 'On defining distance education'. This study applied basic definition techniques to the concept 'distance education' in an attempt to clarify what was to be understood by the term and what was excluded by it. The article was widely cited. The first unit of the Téléuniversité masters degree in distance education, Systèmes de formation à distance (Suavé 1990), provides a selection of major reactions to the article and of writings, which carry the debate further, by Garrison and Shale (1987), Shale (1988), Keegan (1988), Henri and Lamy (1989), Rumble (1989) and Barker et al. (1989). Of work published since the Téléuniversité course was developed one would certainly wish to add Garrison and Shale (1990) and Verduin and Clark (1991).
Analysis of these writings shows that considerable progress has been made in the delineation of the concept of distance education. There is now general agreement on the field of educational endeavour under discussion and there is a healthy amount of debate about the final details.
In the comprehensive 1994 American study Teleconferencing and distance learning 'distance education' is defined by Lane (1994: 135-278) as:
The term 'distance education' refers to teaching and learning situations in which the instructor and the learner or learners are geographically separated, and therefore, rely on electronic devices and print materials for instructional delivery. Distance education includes distance teaching - the instructor's role in the process - and distance learning - the student's role in the process (Keegan 1982, 1983).
This is a clear presentation. It relies on Keegan's (1980, 1986, 1996) analysis, which is also the concept of 'distance education' used in this study:
Distance education is a form of education characterised by:
The focus of this report is non-university distance training in the European Union.
This formulation shows one modification from previous presentations of the definition in the literature. The reason for this is the challenge presented to Keegan's definition by Daniel on page 54 of his recent book, Megauniversities and knowledge media:
Improved telecommunications have been helpful to institutions operating in the correspondence mode. For the remote-classroom mode of distance education they have been essential. Indeed, until telecommunications promoted its renaissance, the theorists of distance education tended to ignore this component of the field. Keegan's (1980) definition of distance education included only 'the possibility of meetings for didactic and social isolation purposes'. Yet, for example in a survey of the diverse distance education scene in Australia it is reported that institutions in several states now use audio conferencing and video conferencing regularly with remote groups of students.
These technologies are particularly attractive to campus universities seeking to develop distance education activity. Classroom instructors believe they can adapt relatively easily to the demands of teaching over audio or video links. As the costs of telecommunications decline, remote classroom teaching will be an increasingly viable option even where numbers are small. Furthermore, desktop publishing makes it easy to produce attractive instructional materials to supplement the teleconference sessions.
It is considered that Daniel has made a valid point and therefore the work 'occasional' is omitted from the definition adopted here, and will be omitted from future formulations of the definition.
Unfortunately, Daniel's own suggestions for definition of this field of training are too vague for scientific use and do not provide a definitional instrument of the quality required for this study or for scientific research.
It is appropriate, therefore, to investigate the phenomenon of distance education by a methodology more widely used in industrial situations. Such a methodology is available in control theory, which presents a coherent set of strategies for arriving at a prescribed goal.
Control theory is normally applied to systems that are a good deal simpler than educational research systems (Sparkes 1980); nevertheless it has valuable insights to offer. Control theory deals with what are called open-loop systems and closed-loop systems.
An open-loop system differs from a closed-loop system in that it does not contain a feedback path from output to input. The goal, namely knowledge from educational research, is obtained as far as practicable by ensuring that the inputs are correct and the system is well designed. An open-loop system is appropriate where facts rather than ideas or concepts are being researched because a good deal of knowledge can be attained by uncomplicated research. Nevertheless, as a research paradigm for distance education a closed-loop system with negative feed-back is recommended.
D
Figure 3: Educational research as an open -loop system
A key concept in control theory is negative feedback. Most human activity is controlled by negative feedback loops (Sparkes1980;12). When one writes, speaks, walks or plays football, one watches or listens to what is happening and uses this information to control what one does. Used as a paradigm for educational research, feedback theory draws attention to the benefits to be had when errors and inadequacies are pointed out and dealt with in a way that is likely to lead to their correction.
Negative feedback processes in educational research exemplify the conversational theory of human learning in that they underline that knowledge from research is achieved by a continuous iteration of the process of absorbing new information, trying to use it and then checking whether it is correctly used. In a feedback model concepts are recycled through the research process and gradually acquire sufficient richness of meaning for them to be used with confidence to express the researcher's findings.
D
Figure 4: Closed-loop system with negative feedback.
This is a control system and the process is the educational research activity. The system input sets the goal which is the desired effect from the research. Crucial to such systems is the measurement or assessment of performance. The overall performance of the system is dominated by the effectiveness of the feedback path. By applying negative feedback in different ways it is possible to remove discrepancies and so enable the researcher to achieve the goal with greater accuracy. In practical systems feedback paths and controllers are normally non-human and work automatically, whereas in educational research the controller is a human researcher. Thus, such models are essentially paradigms; that is, aids to the understanding of complex behaviour patterns.
Control theory provides a satisfactory methodology of the study of the phenomenon of distance education. It is synergistic, does not destroy the complexity of reality, and can encapsulate experience and common sense. Such a method can help in finding patterns in the complex reality of the world of distance systems and can provide guides for analysis. In this study educational research is seen as a closed-loop system with negative feedback.
A more fruitful approach may be to analyse educational provision, as seen by the distance educator, into face-to-face provision, teaching at a distance, and teaching face-to-face at a distance (sometimes referred to as 'virtual education'). This study shows that the field of distance education can be further characterised as either individual-based provision or group-based provision.
While growth in the mobile communication sector had the biggest impact on the telecommunication market in 1995, in terms of revenue and subscriber increases, demand for high speed local access networks - much of it for access to Internet - promises to generate the next wave of infrastructure development (OECD 1997).
Course provision on the Internet has grown rapidly since 1995. Although capable of being used for synchronous events, education and training on the web is basically an individual-based, asynchronous technology.
The next generation of distance education provision may see a fusion of these two drivers. It is likely that by the year 2000, devices with a mobile telephone on one side and an internet-linked computer on the other will be carried by distance students, enabling them to study individually at any location in the world.
It is against this background that the classifications of group-based provision and individual-based systems are put forward to give administrators and analysts a global overview of the field (Figure 5).
The Chinese full-time, group-based system is little studied but research in China gives these indications:
This is the dominant mode of provision in the United States of America and it has a vibrant organisation, the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) to promote its interests. This professional distance education association groups multinational and corporate providers with the universities. This mode of distance education comprises pre-prepared materials, satellite lectures and individual study at home.
Group-based distance education for part-time students is a mode of provision that is highly visible today. Born of the deregulation of the telecommunications industry - associated particularly with policies introduced by the Reagan and Thatcher governments, the speeding up of chips, and the introduction of broadband technologies, it uses satellite, cable and microwave systems all over the Americas. One-way video, two-way audio satellite or two-way video, two-way audio compressed videoconferencing are, perhaps, the dominant technologies in 1998, but a wide range of options are available.
An Internet search in November 1997 brought 51,771 hits for 'distance education' and 103,150 for 'distance learning' (with only 1,190 for 'open education' and 11,803 for 'open learning'), the vast majority for US group-based distance systems. A lively distance education listserv, DEOS from the Pennsylvania State University, carries about 50 e-mails per day, most of them informed, most of them American, and nearly all for this mode of provision.
In 1998 most of the hundred of thousands of students in the Chinese Dianda system are properly located in this category, as part-time education has replaced full-time study at a distance.
European theorists have been slow to acknowledge the rapid spread of group-based systems, as a complement to the individualized systems with which they are more familiar. The richness and complexity of the field cannot be appreciated without considering both modes. Misunderstandings in the literature can arise from trying to treat both modes of provision identically, without appreciating the crucial didactic and logistical differences between teaching adults in groups or as individuals.
Group-based systems, it is true, have had little success in Europe. The successful Irish satellite system, taught from a studio in University College Dublin since 1993 to groupings of students all over the country, has never had a single enrolment from outside Ireland, even though the footprint is Moscow to Morocco and Iceland to Israel, so anyone in Europe could have followed the courses on Friday mornings since 1993.
Similarly, another standard form of provision of United States group-based distance education; two-way video two-way audio compressed digital videoconferencing, has had little success in Europe. Deutsche Telecom has a comprehensive system; the FernUniversität in Hagen has examined some Austrian students; there are a few corporate systems for training of their own staff, but this form of group-based distance remains peripheral in Europe.
Again it is possible to identify two subsystems of this mode of provision - systems based on pre-prepared materials; and systems without pre-prepared materials.
Individual-based distance education systems are to be found world wide. The major characteristics of these systems are the scientific preparation of distance materials for individual learners and the design of student support systems for students studying individually at a distance.
In this way students world wide benefit from being freed from the tyranny of timetabling: travelling at fixed times and on fixed days to join other persons at universities and training centres for the purpose of learning. Learning systems were also freed from streaming: the inherent characteristic of conventional face-to-face group-based education and training in which students of varying intelligence, and of varying study backgrounds, and of varying levels of laziness or motivation are taught the same content in the same groups. The invariable result has been the holding back of the highly intelligent and the highly motivated, with slower or inferior learners learning less than they might.
The rapid development of the Internet in the years 1995 to 1997 has created a new global dimension as individuals all over the world study for degrees or other qualifications from their computer screens either at home or at work. In the period 1995 to 2000 the world is growing mobile, as mobile telephones and mobile computers allow individual students anywhere to study their courses and communicate with their university while travelling.
The University of South Africa ran a similar system from 1910 to 1946, when it commenced the design and production of pre-prepared distance education. There is a thriving system in China today with about 1.000.000 enrolled each year.
Simply put, these systems enrol individual students at a distance, and in the case of the University of London from all over the world, and provide the enrolled students with syllabuses, content description, reading lists and previous examination papers.
The students then choose their method of study. They can study at a local college or a university - if they can find a programme that resembles the distance programme they are enrolled in. Many of the British distance education colleges, like Wolsely Hall, started precisely to provide courses for the University of London External Degree programme. Alternatively the students can study completely individually, buy or borrow the textbooks on the reading list and then present themselves for the examination.
This analysis has attempted to give a framework for research to show how the group-based provision of the new electronics developments of the 1980x, the mobile communications of the 1990s, the web-based provision of the mid 1990s can be accommodated. Rather than posit generation after generation of new technologies, it is suggested that scholars examine two modes of provision which group differing technologies: teaching students at a distance in groups or teaching students at a distance as individuals.
These two modes of distance education are an essential framework for research in distance education and for the management of degree programmes in virtual and distance education. The different dimensions of group-based systems and individual-based systems demonstrate the richness and complexity of the field and confusion can arise where scholars fail to indicate the essential didactic and management differences of training individuals or groups of students.
We must now identify the characteristics of this form of educational endeavour to see if it is suitable for the promotion of lifelong learning, or whether some other form of educational activity should be preferred to it.
In what follows twenty salient characteristics of the form of education known as 'distance education and training' are identified.
A very great part of each national education budget goes to the provision of:
Governments talk frequently about the provision of training for the long term unemployed, for the unemployed, for the disabled, the early school dropouts, immigrants, illiterates and other special groups, but few of these pay taxes.
Taxpayers pay in full for all the groups listed above but who pays for the education of the taxpayers?
Taxpayers today have an urgent need for lifelong learning, for education and training, not just to get promotion and higher pay, but to keep their jobs.
If they do not keep their jobs they can't pay taxes for the education and training of society.
For over 100 years distance education has undertaken the role of training those in employment.
Distance education is largely the study of those who pay for their own training plus for the training of their follow citizens.
Conventional education is the study, in the main, of those who pay neither for their own training nor for the training of those studying at a distance (who are paying for the conventional education from which they benefit).
Distance education is the study of those who do not travel to government training centres, to proprietary training centres, to schools, college or universities, often because they are in full time employment.
The provision of training for taxpayers will be a central role for lifelong learning in the 21st century.
In recent years, improvements of communications technologies has seen this possibility extended. Today the Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance (CNED) in Poitiers, France enrols 26.000 of its 400.000 students each year in 170 counties and teaches them through to the competitive examinations all over the world.
The development of email has greatly enhanced these possibilities and student to institution communication via e-mail, institution to student body communication by bulletin boards, and student to student communication via conferencing packages are now features of many systems.
WWW based courses offer distance education institutions further possibilities of developing their global offerings, which they have maintained for the last century. Teaching totally globally is rarely seen as an inherent characteristic of flexible learning or of open learning with which distance education is sometimes confounded. It is a major asset in distance education's role in lifelong learning in the 21st century.
Clearly the individualization of teaching and learning is more marked in individual-based than in group-based distance provision, but both contain characteristics that distinguish it markedly and permanently from campus-based provision.
Conventional education in the East and West has always been characterised by face to face interaction between the teacher and the learner in the learning group. This leads inevitably to the problem of streaming.
Streaming means that in each group of students who are to be educated there are individual differences in levels of preparation for the study programme, levels of intelligence and level of learning ability. Ideally the educational content should be adapted to these individual characteristics. This can never be achieved in conventional education. In distance education theory and practice, approaches can be made in the individualising of content to begin to match the abilities and the difficulties of the individual student.
The method of teaching in ancient China was focused on teaching rather than on learning. This teaching was by full time private teachers who organised their students in small groups and taught them at private homes (Wei 1997). The centre of the teaching structure was the learning group and this remains the characteristic of eastern education until today.
Even the Chinese distance education system, Dianda, is based on group-based distance education in which students are rarely treated as individuals. Students are taught uniformly in groups, either in television classes from Beijing or by local tutors, with whom the distance education students are gathered for tuition purposes.
Therefore, the characteristics of education tradition and Chinese philosophy focus all education and training, even education and training at a distance, on the learning group.
It appears clear that the conventional education system has no answer to the problem of streaming or to the problem of the inherent abilities, developed skills and qualities of the students whom schools colleges and universities choose to put together in classrooms, lecture rooms, laboratories, field trips or research groupings.
Distance education is different. From its outset in the middle of the last century, distance education broke the structure of the learning group and treated its students as individuals. In many cases an individual tutor, not a group-based teacher, was provided and it is claimed by scholars that frequently a creative one-to-one relationship was set up in the best distance teaching systems which had great benefits for learning. The ability to individualize education and training is the trump card of distance education in its role in lifelong learning in the 21st century.
It thus corresponds to one of the fundamental societal trends in the West at the end of the second millennium: the privatization of Western society. This privatization is most marked in Australia and in much of the United States of America. It is not yet so pronounced in European society but the replacement of the sense of community by a focus on the home is a growing western phenomenon.
Community activities like going to a restaurant are being replaced by the home BBQ; going to the theatre by watching the VCR; going to church is in decline; the home pool replaces going to the seaside; watching the match on TV replaces going to the sports stadium. A distance system takes the student from the learning group and places him/her in a more private situation. Distance education is characterized by the privatization of institutional learning.
It is not the place here to comment on whether the privatization of education inherent in distance education is a good thing or a bad thing. This presentation underlines the appropriateness of the most privatized form of education for lifelong learning in a society facing rapid privatization.
Evidence for this trait can be found easily on the WWW. In spite of its email, bulletin boards and conference packages it is an intensely private way to study.
Peters claims that distance education is the most industrialized from of education and that all the teaching procedures of distance education can be paralleled by the industrial production of goods. Peters has produced a fruitful analysis that is quite foreign to the worlds of flexible learning, of ODL, or of open learning.
Twenty five years later Peters' contribution is still vigorously debated in the distance education literature: does it apply to very small systems?, does it apply to a society that some say is becoming post industrialised?, does it apply to the group-based distance education systems of the United States?, has it been superseded by the educational developments following the telecommunications developments of the 1980s?
His concepts will remain of value to lifelong learning whenever the provision of training to large numbers of students at a distance is considered.
Prisoners and the disabled have been singled out as groupings of students for whom distance training is a privileged form of study.
Changes have been made, it is true, in many schools, colleges and universities to accommodate blind students, deaf students, the severely disabled, and other handicapped students but distance education provides an attractive alternative, by which disabled students can receive university degrees and training certification without the need to travel to venues on a regular basis.
In addition to the disabled and the hospitalized and the imprisoned, anyone who has managed a large distance system can provide a colourful listing of those citizens for whom distance training is the normal way to study: shift-workers; the isolated; travellers; homemakers; army, navy, military; those posted overseas.
At the present time the world is going mobile. Mobile phones and portable computers are replacing wired ones.
Mobile now represents more than 12% of total telecommunications revenue of $519 bn in OECD countries. 27 million new mobile subscribers were added in 1995 and 74 million more are expected in OECD countries in 1996. The number of new telephone lines added by public telecommunications operators at 18 million in 1995 was larger than in any single previous year. Much of this demand stems from residential customers who want access to the Internet
Distance education is well geared to meet the challenges of universal personal mobility and Internet access for courses, which will characterise communications in the immediate future. Flexible education and open learning are more geared to a wired environment. Some have argued that conventional universities will take over the provision of courses to distance students, but it is unlikely that the great universities throughout the world will pay much attention to the students who choose not to attend their campuses
Unlike other systems distance training can cope with the student who is not only at a distance but is moving at a distance too. It has frequently been argued that awarding university degrees to distance education students who never attend their university is alien to the concept of the university as a community of scholars as adumbrated by Newman in Ireland and van Humboldt in Germany. The concept of the award of university degrees to the student moving at a distance will challenge still further the concept of a university and the skills of distance educators in designing quality learning systems.
The telecommunications revolution of the 1980s has turned what was once a damaging characteristic to a potential trump card.
Today a distance education student can submit an assignment electronically from any place in the world, at any time of day or night, Christmas Eve or New Year's Day, and receive back immediately at any time of day or night, on any day of the year, a personalized, customized feedback report indicating correct answers, analysing wrong answers, giving the student his or her grade and advice on the next phase of study. Conventional colleges and universities usually take longer to return students' work.
This was a great benefit to developing and developed countries alike, especially because they did not have to build buildings to house students.
Group based distance systems greatly erode these cost advantages because the investment in media can be high, the variable cost per student can be high, and student volumes tend to be lower. Buildings have to be built or rented for group-based systems.
If flexible learning systems simply mean the addition of media or materials to teaching, then the cost of the system will always be higher than conventional education because teacher + technology > teacher. Something has to be eliminated from the teaching/learning interaction; usually teacher time.
In a recent book Megauniversities and knowledge media: technology strategies for higher education Sir J Daniel, the Vice Chancellor of the Open University of the United Kingdom has vigorously restated the cost effectiveness of distance systems:
The UKOU's costs are significantly lower than other institutions: between 39% and 47% of the other universities' costs for ordinary degrees; between 55% and 80% for honours degrees. The cost of education in France through the CNED is half that of conventional methods. Wagner in 1977 showed that the annual average recurrent cost per full-time undergraduate at the OUUK was less than one-third the cost at a campus university, and the cost of a UKOU graduate was less than half. Nearly 20 years later, Peters and Daniel, using a different type of analysis, showed that cost comparisons were still strongly in favour of the UKOU(1996:39).
Cost advantage will be a crucial factor in the choice of provision for the lifelong learner in the 21st century.
Group-based distance education developed in the 1980s.
Virtual or electronic classrooms can now be linked by satellite or by compressed video codec technology or by full bandwidth links, making it possible for the first time in history to teach face to face at a distance. The lecturer can see and hear the students present in the class and also all the other students at the other sites hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. All the students at all the locations can see and hear the lecturer and all other students in the system. The interaction of face-to-face education has been recreated electronically.
As the twenty-first century approaches, conventional face-to-face teaching in schools, colleges and universities continues to prosper but it is complemented by correspondence, audio, video and computer technologies from correspondence schools and open universities throughout the world. Both are enriched by the availability of virtual systems in which the face-to-face interpersonal communication of conventional education can be achieved at a distance. This will give it leadership in lifelong learning in the 21st century.
All the characteristics of the lifelong learning movement (Cropley 1978) have been characteristics of distance systems for decades.
Distance systems have always been characterised by
The theme of lifelong learning, much vaunted in the 1970s and the early 1980s (Cropley) appears to be returning to popularity with European governments and international development structures. A form of educational provision that has maintained the characteristics of lifelong learning for 100 years and in which the focus on these characteristics is an essential attribute of the form of provision, is a leading candidate for provision.
Thus the challenge for European Union governments or Ministries of Education is to decide whether citizens are to be forced to go to the schools, college and universities which taxpayers' moneys provide for their training, or whether governments should pay for them to study at a distance. As most of the distance students are taxpayers, who pay for the education of society by their taxes, are they to be forced out of the workforce so that they can accomplish their own training?
| Students who need support and do not wish support | Students who need and wish support |
| Students who do not need but wish support | Students who do not need or wish support |
The protection of studying at home, as well as the convenience, will weigh heavily in favour of distance systems in the 21st century.
Distance systems traditionally provide courses for adults at primary school level. Distance systems traditionally provide course for adults at secondary school level. Matriculation, Abitur, HSC, 'O' Levels and 'A' levels at a distance for adults that have not achieved high school graduation.
Distance education has traditionally been associated with second chance education, with the training of those who have been failed by the education system, whether at university or at college or at school level. It has also been a characteristic form of education for adults who dropped out of school early - and then found themselves without the basic levels of mathematics or English (or their corresponding national language) which is essential for holding down any job.
Finally, distance education and training is the usual form of training for those who have bad experiences and bad memories of school - those who hate school and never want to set foot in an educational establishment again. These persons, too, need training in the world of today and distance systems are the normal form of provision for them
During the short period of the Voctade research programme the web has radically transformed training world-wide and by late 1997 the web is awash with virtual universities (most of them American), virtual corporate universities (most of them American), virtual campuses of conventional universities (most of them American). The Distance Education Online Symposium, an important centre of research on distance education and training today, carries numerous theoretical and practical analyses each day on courses for the web, design for the web, student activity on the web, and all the other themes related to web based training
Unlike other forms of flexible training with which it is sometimes grouped, it is a characteristic of distance systems to be available to web based training, totally globally, with the student in this instance not moving from his or her screen for the purposes of training.
Keegan's 'reintegration of the teaching acts'; Holmberg's 'guided didactic conversation' and Vertecchi's 'need to create an educational environment' are equally applicable in web based training as in other forms of training at a distance.
Collis (1996) has made a powerful case for the use of the web on campus, but a very large part of WBT will doubtless be at a distance.
These two systems demonstrated the inherent quality of distance training systems to enrol hundreds of thousands of students annually and to move rapidly in volume without the need for vast new buildings and infrastructure to accommodate student numbers. Keegan (1993) put this characteristic forward as a vital asset for government planners in both developed and developing countries in dealing with large groups of trainees in ways which no other form of training provision can match.
It is not of the nature of flexible training or open learning or training centres to devise systems for hundreds of thousands of students, in fact their whole ethos is quite disparate from the very large distance training systems with global penetration.
Keegan in the early 1990s set 100,000 enrolments annually as the cut-off figure for very large distance systems. Examples in Europe in 1998 are:
| Charkov Beheer B.V. | 650 000 |
| CNED France | 378 000 |
| UNED Spain | 180 000 |
| OUUK England | 165 000 |
| CIDEAD Spain | 130 000 |
| LOI Netherlands | 109 000 |
The first university degree in distance education to provide professional training in the field was developed by Keegan for the University of South Australia (the former Adelaide College of Advanced Education) in 1982 and there have been a growing number of degrees and advanced qualifications both face to face and at a distance since then.
The CNED in France, Europe's largest distance education institution, has played a leading role in developing training programmes for a series of metiers, the professional fields that are required for running a very large distance system, and in 1996 announced the foundation of its École de formation à l'enseignement à distance to pursue this goal.
Theoretical positions for this form of education distinguish it from conventional provision: Peters talks of 'the most industrialised form of teaching and learning, the Swedish scholar, Holmberg (1986) of a 'guided didactic conversation', the Irish scholar Keegan (1986) of the 'reintegration of the teaching acts', and the Italian scholar Vertecchi (1997) of the 'creation of an educational environment'.
Failure to recognise the absence of an educational environment for distance learning is normally a recipe for failure. Keegan (1986) has constantly emphasised that 50% of distance learning systems depend on what happens after the learning materials have been developed and student learning begins. The lesson has not been learned. Costly programmes for the development of materials for distance learners fail because the educational environment needed for their success has been forgotten - it is expensive, awkward and time consuming to support real students studying at a distance, months or years after the materials that have been developed for them were completed.
The lessons of the collapse of the University of Mid America in 1982 have not been learned: in 1997 the closure at the Stoho, a distance learning system in Belgium, bears much resemblence to the closure of the University of Mid America 15 years previously.
The Voctade final deliverables present a closely argued rationale for the creation of an educational environment by Vertecchi, President of the Centro Europeo dell'Educazione (CEDE) at Frascati, Italy.
Group-based distance education developed in the 1980s.
The possibility of teaching face-to-face at a distance was achieved by an electronics revolution in the 1980s. The deregulation of the telecommunications industry allied to the speeding up of chips and the introduction of broadband technologies brought about this veritable revolution. The German scholar, Peters (1991) had argued that there was something unsettling about a form of education (distance education) in which interpersonal communication and face-to-face interaction in the learning group were eliminated, as these were regarded as cultural imperatives for education in East and West. Now these characteristics can be electronically recreated.
Virtual or electronic classrooms can now be linked by satellite or by compressed video codec technology or by full band with links, making it possible for the first time in history to teach face to face at a distance. The lecturer can see and hear the students present in the class and also all the other students at the other sites hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. All the students at all the locations can see and hear the lecturer and all other students in the system. The interaction of face-to-face education has been recreated electronically.
As the twenty-first century approaches, conventional face-to-face teaching in schools, colleges and universities continues to prosper but it is complemented by correspondence, audio, video and computer technologies from correspondence schools and open universities throughout the world. Both are enriched by the availability of virtual systems in which the face-to-face interpersonal communication of conventional education can be achieved at a distance.
Mobile now represents more than 12% of total telecommunications revenue of $519bn in OECD countries. 27 million new mobile subscribers were added in 1995 and 74 million more are expected in OECD countries in 1996. The number of new telephone lines added by public telecommunications operators at 18 million in 1995 was larger than in any single previous year. Much of this demand stems from residential customers who want access to the Internet.
Distance education is well geared to meet the challenges of universal personal mobility and Internet access for courses which will characterise communications in the immediate future. Flexible education and open learning are more geared to a wired environment. Some (Collis 1996) have argued that conventional universities will take over the distance students, but it is unlikely that the great universities, places like Harvard University, Oxford University, University College Dublin, University of Hamburg, University of Rome I will pay much attention to the students who choose not to attend their campuses (University College Dublin has recently built new 684 seat lecture theatres) but who study at an increasingly mobile and increasingly global distance.
German continues to use Fernstudium for the university part of the field and Fernunterricht for the non-university part of the field.
There has been a slight evolution in French from Téléenseignement (distance teaching) to Education à distance (distance education).
Spanish has maintained Educación a distancia (distance education).
In 1982 general agreement world-wide was achieved that 'distance education' was the best term for general usage. The benefits to research and practice were great as energies which were previously directed to terminological cul-de-sacs were focused on developing the theory and practice of distance education. The first courses in the subject 'distance education' for university degree programmes were inaugurated.
Since then the field has moved on: new technologies have been introduced, new government policies and funding mechanisms have been implemented and new relationships have been established between the student studying at home (or at work) with the schools, colleges and universities of the European Union.
In the United Kingdom, and also in other parts of the EU these new socio-economic realities have led to the development of new education and training strategies which have been accompanied by a change in the use of terminology in this and related fields.
In what follows brief analyses of a selection of the terms 'flexible learning' and 'open learning' and 'open and distance learning' and 'open distance learning' are given to indicate why 'distance training' is used in this report.
It is considered that 'students studying at a distance' is capable of measurement, though there are real difficulties of interpretation both of terminology and practice in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, the Scandinavian countries. It is felt that by using a scientific definition instrument, students who choose not to, or are not able to, attend the training centres, the schools, the colleges and the universities of the European Union can be 'identified' and that this is a socio-economic phenomenon of such importance that the effort required to quantify it is valid.
It is considered, on the other hand, that no definition instrument can be designed for the measurement of the goal 'flexible learning' or for the term 'open learning' and that therefore these terms could with difficulty be used in this study.
The kernel of the Voctade approach to distance education and training is distance education as an educational environment, and this will be developed later in this report by Professor B Vertecchi.
In the United States one finds both terms used for the two major associations of institutions in the field: the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) and the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC).
The USDLA works mainly at higher education level and uses the term 'distance learning'. The DETC works mainly at further education level and uses the term 'distance education and training'.
'Distance education' is a suitable term to bring together both the teaching and learning elements of this field of education. The relationship of 'distance teaching' and 'distance learning' may be illustrated thus:
Figure 6 Relationship of distance learning to distance education.
Since the early 1980s the term 'distance education' has gained in strength and acceptance. It indicates well the basic characteristic of this form of education: the separation of teacher and learner which distinguishes it from conventional, oral, group-based education. It also encompasses well the two characteristic operating systems (distance teaching) and a student support subsystem (distance learning).
It is also a term for the future. Distance educators in the past have held on to terms like 'correspondence' or 'home study' because, it was claimed, they were conforming to students. There is every evidence that citizens of the late 1990s will be able to cope with distance in a way previous generations could never dream of. Students, too are coming to choose distance rather than backing off from it.
There are, however, many advantages in the term 'distance learning':
For this reason the expression 'distance education' is used for the area of education studied in this report and, where appropriate, 'distance education and training' is used to give an overview of the field with 'distance learning' being used for the students' part of the process.
The terms considered are:
Flexible learning is enabling learners to learn when they want (frequency, timing, duration), how they want (modes of learning), and what they want (that is learners can define what constitutes learning to them). These flexible learning principles may be applied at a distance. If so then the term 'distance learning' is used. In such courses the learners can choose where they want to learn (at home, at an institution or company, at a training centre, etc.) (Van Den Brande 1993:2).
In this study flexible learning is considered a socio-economic goal. As the 21st century approaches flexible learning is a goal for all learners whether on campus or off campus. It is, therefore, considered not measurable in statistical terms and unsuitable as a generic term for the field of educational provision studied in this report.
The authoritative journal of The British Association for Open learning, Open Learning Today in a recent issue (January - February 1997) puts forward a picture of aspects of open learning that have marked differences from the Open University picture of distance learning cited above and the definition of distance education adopted in the previous section:
Increasing numbers of traditional campus-based HE institutions are looking at open learning as a way of dealing with the need to enhance the teaching and learning experience of students in the face of large class sizes, shrinking resources and diverse student population. Although the open learning approaches adopted by these institutions vary significantly, one element that is crucial to the success of any OL approach in campus-based universities is the way it is introduced and implemented. This is particularly true when open learning is introduced in an essentially didactic environment such as many traditional HE institutions. The issues surrounding the introduction of open learning take on greater importance when, as in many HE institutions, it is introduced piecemeal, i.e. when a few modules/units are delivered by open learning while the remaining programme continues to be taught traditionally.
Key issues in the introduction and implementation of open learning in traditional campus based universities are the following: introduction of open learning should be preceded by clear thinking through the implications of such an approach. Open learning is not a panacea - it is only one of the many approaches used to meet the contradictory demands placed on HE.
In a recent article Delling analyses the term 'open learning' and presents important references to it in the literature:
To be open (depending on context) is to be not closed, restricted, prejudiced or clogged; but free, candid, generous, above board, mentally flexible, future oriented, etc. The opposite (sic) does not bear thinking about, and there can be no third alternative. 'Open' is yum (Hill 1975,3-4).
Open Learning is an imprecise phrase to which a range of meanings can be, and is, attached. It eludes definition (Mac Kenzie, Postgate, Scupham 1975, 15).
Open learning simply means student-centred or flexible learning systems. It is an umbrella term to gather together a whole series of ideas; social, educational and political which talk about learning; ideas which break away from the traditional concept of education taking place in a particular institution at a particular time with a particular tutor. The emphasis is therefore shifted from the provider to the learner. What is under consideration is his or her needs, his or her convenience, learning at his or her own pace in many different ways (Paine 1982 30).
'Open learning' is a term used to describe courses flexibly designed to meet individual requirements. It is often applied to provision which tries to remove barriers that prevent attendance at more traditional courses, but it also suggests a learner centred philosophy. Open learning courses may be offered in a learning centre of some kind or most of the activity can be carried out away from such a centre (e.g. at home). In nearly every case specially prepared or adapted materials are necessary (Lewis and Spencer 1986 :9).
All these references indicate that the concept of open learning lies outside the focus of this study and that it does not refer to a countable or statistically measurable form of provision.
Among the reasons for not using it here are:
Rumble sums it up well by saying that the values of openness 'have nothing intrinsically to do with distance education which is morally ambivalent (i.e. it can promote open learning or closed learning)' (Rumble 1991:72). Rumble is right; distance education is just a form of educational provision. It is quite neutral. Some courses are open, some are closed; per se it is neither.
It is felt, therefore, that the terms 'open learning' and 'distance education' can be adequately distinguished in spite of the growing practice of blurring the distinctions between them.
Is open learning, then, included in this report? The answer is clear: if the course or programme falls within the definition of distance education given above - it is; if not, it is not.
The justification of this position comes from a close study of the European national reports on open distance learning commissioned by the Task Force on Human Resources in 1992:
| Belgium FL: | P. Hendrikx(ed), Open learning in Flanders, 1993, 75pp |
| Belgium FR: | J. Fransen & V. Waterschoot, Rapport sur la situation de l'Enseignement à distance dans la Communauté Française de Belgique, 1993, 99pp |
| Denmark: | L. Voss Distance education /flexible learning in Denmark 1993, 72pp |
| France: | Oravep, Open and distance training: the situation in France, 1993, 72pp |
| Germany: | H Back, State of the art and prospects of open and distance learning in the Federal Republic of Germany 1993 66pp (including appendices). |
| Greece: | E.Manousaki, Open distance learning in Greece 1994, 34pp |
| Ireland | K MacKeogh & V Hogg, Open distance learning in Ireland,1993, 94pp |
| Netherlands: | W. Hoeben, Open and distance learning in the Netherlands, 1993, 95pp |
| Spain: | I López-Aranguren, Report on national open distance learning in Spain, 1993, 112pp |
| United Kingdom: | York Computing Ltd, Open and flexible learning in the UK, 1993 85pp. |
Particularly awkward are the attempts made by a number of the reports to achieve classification of the variety of programmes which they consider fall with the two categories they have been asked to survey. In the Netherlands report, in particular, the complexity of the classification system and the lack of relationship between various elements of the attempted classifications show the difficulty for the theorist of including 'open learning' and 'distance education' under one banner.
Of particular significance is the Dutch report which makes strenuous efforts to set up a typology that would encompass both distance systems and open systems. The attempts to unite such different forms of provision result in a structure that is theoretically difficult and the value of treating 'distance learning' as a separate entity from 'open learning' becomes clear for the analyst:
A typology of open and distance learning
From this starting point and for the purposes of this report, provisions for Open and Distant Learning (ODL) will be differentially defined. In a property space with provisions for open learning and provisions for distance learning as separate dimensions, distinctions may be made between:
| Provisions for distance learning | + | a: ++ | c:-+ |
| strict ODL | distance ODL | ||
| - | b: +- | d:-- | |
| open ODL | no ODL |
Depending on its definition, each dimension may be regarded as a dichotomy (either, or), or as an ordinal continuum (more or less). In a dichotomous definition type a, strict ODL, will be the only type of Open and Distance Learning. The dimensions of the property space of figure 1 may be, however, be defined according to the properties of the polar positions; the property space then provides only ideal types; in reality only arrangements may be found that approximate the ideal types more or less. There are, thus, degrees in flexibility in the concept of open learning and of distance learning. Some arrangements may use one or both concepts rigorously, other arrangements may use one or both concepts flexibly. With such ordinal definitions the types b and c of open ODL and distance ODL respectively, may have some reality. The following examples may make this clear.' (Hoeben R, Open and distance learning in the Netherlands, 1992/3)
Investigation has shown that a document prepared for a Brussels committee by de Vocht used the term 'open Afstandsonderwijs' which means 'Distance education programmes for which normal entry requirements have been waived' was mistranslated into English as 'open distance learning'. This expression probably means in English 'non-closed distance learning'. Although some see 'non-closed' as a criticism of the lack of student-centeredness in certain courses at a distance, the term is best regarded as a mistake and should be abandoned.
German scholars, however, apparently not realising the mistake in the English terminology 'open distance learning' have set out to develop a theoretical perspective based on the concept. Zimmer in a 1994 volume Vom Fernunterricht zum Open Distance Learning brings together a group of German scholars who attempt to develop the theme in a book of 310 pages. Zimmer's own contribution focuses on an attempt to formulate a German theoretical background for the term.
Happily, there has been little take up of this European Commission term in the literature of distance education from Canada, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, the major non-European contributors to the literature of distance education in English, and by the time of the drafting of this report it appeared that the European Commission authorities were no longer supporting the use of the term.
Distance education has quite a number of structural features in common with the industrialised production process. Both processes are, we observe, decisively determined by the principles of rationalisation, the most important ones being the division and subdivision of labour, specialisation, mechanisation and automation. Both processes have to rely on careful planning, intensive preparatory work, adequate organisation (bureaucracy, management approach), regular evaluation (quality control) and permanent optimising. Both processes profit from the increased emphasis on research and increased cost-effectiveness, and both of them suffer from increased depersonalisation.
In evaluating these findings, the questions raised can be answered as follows. What is the characteristic feature of distance education? He replies that it should be apparent that it is its high degree of industrialisation. Hence, distance education can be defined as the most industrial form of teaching and learning. This definition points to a general characteristic of the new form of teaching and learning, it illuminates its structural peculiarity, and separates it sharply from all conventional forms of face-to-face instruction. It applies to all forms of distance education as it can be more or less industrialised - just like the production process. It is useful as it conveys a sense of direction and proportion and clarifies the typical approach of distance education to politicians responsible for education, planners of education, managers of distance teaching systems and their staff as well as to teachers and students.
Peters had built up an impressive database on distance education in the mid 1960s. He relentlessly set out to track down every phenomenon of distance education and training, every distance education institution, and statistics, it would seem, that would include every distance student in Europe and world-wide. He avoided the pitfalls of omitting major groups of evidence (children's distance education, proprietary distance education, communist distance education) that have characterised some writing in the 1980s when at least one third of distance education was in the USSR or China. The accuracy and precision of his knowledge of the phenomena he was dealing with is one of the strengths of his work.
The concept of the industrialisation of education and the view of distance education as a more industrialised form of teaching and learning is a striking and original insight. In the mid 1990s it retains its value especially in the fields of mass education and employment. Many nations today need university systems capable of enrolling 100,000 students a year or more. Peters' insight points the way for them. In the employment crisis of the mid 1990s the institutional structures of the more industrialised form of education will provide lasting employment for many categories of workers, in contrast to non industrialised forms of non traditional education which tend to provide only short term consultancies.
No evaluation of Peters' positions are offered here but a lively debate on his theories, led by Rumble (1995) in the Open University of the United Kingdom's journal, Open Learning, shows the persistence of his views on distance systems as industrial systems in the late 1990s.
Independence therefore, is not the element that the definition should reflect. The term 'privatisation' is much closer to the reality. A distance system takes the student from the learning group and places him/her in a more private situation. Learning is often private when it is not institutionalised. Distance education is characterised by the privatisation of institutional learning.
The socio-economic phenomenon of privatisation in modern society is already widely present in American and Australian society, and there are aspects of it in the European Union. Watching television has, for some, replaced travelling to a football match; the home BBQ has replaced travelling to a restaurant ; the home swimming pool has replaced travelling to the beach; viewing a VCR at home has replaced travelling to the theatre; activities at home are replacing travelling to Church.
Distance training can be seen as replacing travelling to the training centre or the school or college or university. It represents a privatisation of institutional learning, as the study at home is accredited by degrees awarded by the university, and it eliminates travel to join the learning group as the privileged place where the teaching/learning process occurs.
If one of these technologies of distance training, courses for degrees on the World Wide Web at home, for instance, were to triumph and become widespread in training, then the challenge of the privatisation of institutional learning would become acute for national policy makers.
Exclusion from the Voctade study implies no criticism of modes of provision nor can it be taken to suggest that distance training is considered superior in any way to the modes of provision excluded from the study. It simply means that what is excluded is considered the work of other studies, of other projects and of other researchers.
The Voctade study is an analysis of a form of educational provision. It does not seek to praise it or to promote it. The study seeks to provide data for researchers, planners, policy makers and the public about the dimensions of a form of training.
Children's education at a distance is an important field for research and analysis but does not fall within the Voctade study. As has been shown, children's distance education played an important role in the development of distance programmes by national governments, especially in the Australian states in the 1910s and by the Canadian provincial governments in the 1920s. It lies at the centre of what is, arguably, the EU's most important distance education institution, the Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance in France (Cned). As has been shown, this institution teaches children in 170 countries in 1997 from its base in France.
In 1997 children's distance education is a vibrant field, with important innovations in the United States of America especially, including the Star Schools Programme, but it does not form part of this study.
It is acknowledged that excellent achievements exist in the EU in 1997: the two-way video, two-way audio compressed video training systems of Deutsche Telekom, for instance, and the use of other media by the same organisation. It is also acknowledged that should corporations which today provide distance training in-house programmes for their staff enter the public market, they would provide serious competition for the four categories of providers studied in this report:
These are excellent initiatives but do not form part of this study, if they do not meet the criteria of the scientific definition of distance education developed above.
Non-traditional courses at colleges and universities are the subjects of studies and research in their own right, as are studies of flexible education and open educational programmes.
Socio-economic indicators have been given to try to suggest what is specific to distance education as opposed to other forms of non-traditional programmes, flexible learning programmes or open learning programmes, and these include industrialisation of training, the privatisation of institutional learning, the absence of travel to the institution or centre, the lack of eye-to-eye contact which some would claim as an inherent feature of the teaching/learning process.
It would be pedantic to try to measure arithmetically where the essential features that constitute the normal educational environment are created for students in schools, colleges and universities and, on the other hand, to delineate precisely where distance education with its peculiar didactic and administrative strategies begins, but an incisive and ground breaking analysis has been provided by Professor Vertecchi in another part of this report with his thesis of distance education as an educational environment. This demonstrates the environment that the providers of distance systems must create because otherwise the educational transaction would not exist, and provides a contrast to the providers of conventional training programmes for which the institutional educational environment already exists.
Those readers who insist on a more arithmetic calculation are referred to the work of the two American scholars, Sosdian and Sharp, in the 1970s. Their proposition that the peculiar didactic and logistical arrangements, or the need to create Vertecchi's educational environment, come into play when 75% or more of a teaching programme is at a distance, has provided a useful yardstick and has remained unchallenged in the literature for nearly 25 years.
This is because the Voctade study has a major focus on certification of courses at a distance, transferability of certification from one country to another, the value of distance course certification on the market place and in competitive job interviews, and the transferability of skills and aptitudes developed at a distance to the workplace.
Vocational education and training is, however, defined broadly here and cultural courses and courses which contribute to the students' culture and employability are included, with only pure hobby-type courses being excluded.
Many language courses on discs, cassettes and CD Roms are considered to be of this type and are not studied here.
The work of the Scandinavian scholars Bååth, Holmberg and Rekkedal, in the 1970s, established two-way communication as the essential defining element of distance education and the criterion for distinguishing the field of distance education from teach-yourself literature and self-instruction packages, and a guideline to the identification of the privatisation of institutional learning. Teach-yourself books are not considered a form of institutional learning, and educational packages that are made available for private study lack the dimension of two-way communication that is an essential characteristic of distance education.
In a similar way television programme like Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, or David Barrowski's The ascent of man, or French without tears are considered to belong to the fields of instructional television and educational radio and not part of distance education.
Distance education focuses on home-based students who often have very different technological requirements from students studying in universities and other educational establishments or the training centres of corporations, large or small.
It is frankly acknowledged that packages with extensive performance support systems (PSS) and forms of electronic interaction with intelligent electronic agents, pose definition problems for the analyst which it is not proposed to deal with here.
The use of multimedia and other forms of technology in education is a vibrant field of educational research, known either as the field of educational technology, or telematics or informatics or the use of advanced technologies in education, and has a very large literature, but it is not to be confused with the form of educational provision known as distance education.
There are many excellent distance education projects and plans, many of them funded by or supported by the Commission of the European Union, but the Voctade study deals only with course provision at a distance in the EU.
When does a project become a course? The question is relevant to conventional universities and not just distance systems. There are a number of indicators: when the pilot year of the project has been completed; when the course in listed in the institution's brochure as a normal course; when the fee has been decided and has been paid by citizens; when the certification level for the course has been approved by the institution and submitted, if necessary, for accreditation by national bodies; when the examinations have been held and students have passed or failed.
This phenomenon was not of marked importance when the Voctade proposal was drafted. It would require fresh funding and a new project adequately to survey or analyse fully this phenomenon.
It is considered, however that there is a seamless interface between distance training and web based training and that the didactic norms, the indicators of success or failure, the theoretical positions (including Peters' views of the potential alienation of staff and students) are transferable to web-based training.
For this reason where institutions have submitted statistics which include Internet based courses they are included, provided that they meet the other Voctade criteria: they must be established courses for vocational certification and not projects, hopes or plans for the future.
