Distance Learning; International Comparisons

Many industrialized countries show considerable interest in distance learning and invest large sums in it beyond the high school level, with very encouraging results. The evidence from these countries to date is that distance learning, at relatively low cost, can reach millions of students who otherwise would not have much opportunity for studying. The Third, or Majority, World's interest in and use of distance learning appears to make a great deal of sense. This seems particularly so in college and university education, where the cost per student in conventional campusesis very high. At this level, Majority World countries spend as much as one-third of their education budgets. Even the conservative World Bank, after many years of more or less ignoring it, recently endorsed distance learning as a cost-effective solution for the Majority World to consider. Distance learning is not a universal panacea, however. There are failures to report as well as successes. Despite the powerful international forces that drive globalization, electronification, and commodification, each country must generate its own model to suit its own needs and conditions. Each country should decide, for example, whether to set up one or more distance teaching universities like the Open University in the UK or to promote distance teaching as an additional function of conventional campus-based institutions. Each country needs a policy on how it will exploit distance learning and for which groups of students. Each country should decide whether and how it wishes to collaborate with other countries to get the most out of distance learning.     

远程学习者能否享受到成本优势

当前大多数学者认为只要达到了一定的规模,远程教育将能够实现以较低的生均成本让更多的学习者获得较高质量的教育。但是也有学者对这一观点持悲观或者质疑的态度。那么我国远程教育的学习者能否享受到低生均成本优势？如果能,又是否是以得到＂低效廉价＂的教育为代价呢？中国社会科学调查中心关于中国家庭动态跟踪调查数据显示：在控制了学历层次和专业后,与普通教育的学习者相比较,远程教育的学习者付出了显著更少的教育支出;在控制了私人教育支出等因素后,远程教育学习者和普通教育学习者的教育满意度基本持平,没有显著差异。这说明现阶段远程教育的学习者的确享受到了远程教育的成本优势,而且这种优势并不是以教育质量为代价的。同时,实证结果还显示普通教育学习者的教育满意度对＂住宿费＂和＂交通费＂具有显著的价格敏感度,而远程教育支出中的＂其他费用＂项目会显著拉低学习者的教育满意度,因而需要远程教育办学机构对这部分费用进行减免。     

利用概念图工具促进远程学生有意义学习初探

现代远程学习是可以预见的未来教育发展趋势。概念图是一种有效的促进学生有意义学习的工具。如何将二者结合起来,利用概念图工具促进远程学生的有意义学习,对于现代远程教育具有重要意义。本文在参考国内外研究成果的基础上,分析了远程学习环境中各要素的关系,采用教育建模法建构了一个利用概念图工具促进远程学生有意义学习的过程模型。     

Learning from all? The World Bank,aid agencies and the construction of hegemony in education for development

This paper explores the nature and quality of the participation that characterises the Bank's consultations with external actors and examines the extent to which the Bank is responsive to such feedback when it comes to defining its policy preferences and strategies in the education domain. It draws on a case study of the participatory process that was organised around the definition of the last World Bank Education Strategy (WBES2020) and focuses on the participation of three European aid agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Department for International Development of the UK. This paper acknowledges that a significant effort was made to promote the inclusiveness and transparency of the participatory process, yet it concludes that the conditions for promoting quality participation and substantive policy change were not provided. Furthermore, the way international aid agencies produce and use knowledge limits their role and influence in the context of the Bank's consultations. Hence, by not contesting the Bank's policy ideas substantially, the agencies contribute inadvertently to reproducing the Bank's predominance in the education for development field.     

Collaborative schemes and the ethos of distance education: A study of Australian and New Zealand universities

Although the economic benefits of collaborative schemes and transfer of courses in distance education are clear, examples of collaboration between distance education institutions are rare. A reason is sought in theorganisational climate or ethos of each institution engaged in distance education, which inhibits joint design and use of courses or the transfer of a course from one institution to another. This theme is examined in relation to distance education in the integrated mode system of Australian and New Zealand universities, six in all. The universities are compared in terms of six features of organisational climate of particular relevance to distance education: physical characteristics, academic organisation, involvement in distance teaching, organisation of distance teaching, components of distance teaching and staff attitudes to distance education. It is concluded that the considerable variation between institutions, with respect to these features, creates difficulties for collaboration. The best prospect for collaborative schemes in distance education therefore may have to lie in the use of national or international agencies to validate courses as part of a national or international higher education programme along the lines of Britain's CNAA.     

Rethinking the World Bank Agenda for Chinese Higher Education Reform

This article explores the way in which the World Bank has worked effectively with China in higher education. It investigates whether or not the cooperation between the two has changed in line with their changing relationship. More specifically, it discusses whether the World Bank’s China agenda reflects the reform package of socio-institutional neoliberalism which the World Bank has tended to promote worldwide in the era of the Post-Washington Consensus, and how China’s higher education reform has been influenced by the agenda. The article argues that as China is transferring its role from that of a recipient country to that of a donor country, it is increasingly important to position itself as a global player. Other than mastering the game rules of the international community, China should also expand its influence within and through these major international organizations.     

论远程教育发展的内在逻辑——兼及开放大学的发展轨迹

远程教育的发展需要不断地适应环境的变化,不断地根据环境变化调整自身与环境的关系,需要把握远程教育发展的内在规律。人们从教学系统的内外环境变化等角度对远程教育发展内在规律进行了探索,由于对远程教育本质理解上的外在倾向,探索结论对实践指导的效果比较有限。应从远程教育质的分析入手,根据质的变化规律,探索远程教育发展的内在逻辑,并从资源配置的角度对远程教育发展各个阶段的表现形态和相互关系进行阐述,形成以传统面授教学和自我导向学习为起点和终点的远程教育发展轨迹,在此基础上,对未来以开放大学为表现形态的远程教育发展特征进行探讨。     

The power struggle over education in developing countries: The case of the UNESCO-World Bank Co-operative program, 1964-1989

This paper examines the relationship between the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) between the 1960s and the 1980s. It focuses on the Co-operative Program (CP) between the two organizations, which was established in 1964 and lasted officially until 1989. In the context of the Co-operative Program, the Education Financing Division (EFD) was established, a joint unit located in UNESCO, with the purpose of carrying out technical missions to assist governments in the identification and preparation of educational projects and the formulation of funding requests to the World Bank. Drawing on archival research and interviews with former UNESCO and World Bank officials, the paper traces the history of the Co-operative Program, which was characterized by intense power struggles exacerbated by Cold War tensions. During the 25 years of the duration of the Co-operative Program, the World Bank developed into the most influential policy shaper for education in developing countries, while the influence of UNESCO, created in the post-World War II order as the United Nations’ designated organization for education, declined. Using Bourdieu’s concept of fields and DiMaggio and Powell’s concept of isomorphism as analytical lenses, the World Bank’s expansion to a development agency will be explained by its greater autonomy as a field, endowed with more capital based on the rationalization of education and isomorphic processes of professionalization of the “field of power” of educational planning. To the detriment of UNESCO, the World Bank became the powerhouse of a global governance structure that was built with support from the United States government and furthered by the rise of economics.     

运用案例教学法构建师生互动平台——《现代教育原理》教学改革实验

在教育教学改革的形势下，在新的教学理论的推动下，依据天津电大教学实践，总结出具有新特点的案例教学模式。其特点是适应电大系统远程开放教学，构建互动式教与学方式，注重学生自主学习能力的培养，提高学生的基本素质和各种能力，使教学过程清楚并相互衔接。这对电大系统远程开放教育教学方式是一种有益探讨和尝试。     

远程教育实施“学分银行”管理模式的思考

"学分银行"是建设学习型社会的有效措施,是远程教育改革和发展的方向.建设远程教育"学分银行",要把握"学分银行"的内涵与特性,正视并解决建设过程中选课制、教育资源、学分互认、转化体制与管理技术等方面存在的深层次问题.     

Re-inventing distance education, 1971?2001

Over the period 1971–2001, distance education has changed enormously. This article identifies five key changes. Firstly, and technologically, the period opened with the establishment of one of the most successful of the multi-media based distance education systems, the UK Open University, but ends with the rush towards online education. This technological change underpins a second change, a pedagogical shift within distance education from a transmission model of education towards a constructivist model exploiting computer-mediated communication. Paradoxically this has occurred just when some commentators have seen the dehumanization of the traditional education. The third change has been the growing acceptance of distance education, and with this, its expansion. Linked to this is the fourth change ? the change in the way distance education is perceived. It has moved from low status to acceptance, with increased confidence as its methods are adopted across education as a whole. Finally, distance education can be seen to be evolving from an essentially modernist (bureaucratic or Fordist) form of education into a post-modernist phenomenon with a focus on the student as consumer, on flexibility and global reach.     

Paulo Freire’s ideas as an alternative to higher education neo-liberal reforms in Latin America

This article examines the principal arguments found in the work of Paulo Freire concerning policy and ethics in the field of higher education in Latin America. It critically analyzes the university reform in Latin America dominated by the thought and practice promoted by various international financial institutions (such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank [IDB]) beginning in the 1980s and then looks at the feasibility of an alternative Freirian view. The work of Paulo Freire celebrated the liberating role that public university education should play in the training of citizens and professionals, that is with a critical and ethical conscience, committed to the needs of the locality, region and the world. All this is in clear opposition to what has happened to Latin American universities, influenced by neo-liberal reforms over the last decades.     

Resistance Towards the Language of Globalisation – The Case of Sri Lanka

This paper relates the contemporary educational reforms in Sri Lanka to the processes of globalisation. The international monetary organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank and the regional organisations like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) play a dominant role in influencing the debt-receiving countries when it comes to their educational practice. The intensity of the influence of these organisations can vary depending on the existing educational policy of the aid receiving countries. This paper, after a brief introduction on globalisation, examines its effects on the education policy in Sri Lanka with a special emphasis on the current language policy. Equity in education is usually advocated at primary level based on the universal primary education concept so highly upheld by the World Bank. However, the present high human development indicators are undoubtedly due to Sri Lanka's free education policy in native languages. The paper concludes stressing the importance to retain the national education policy as a means of empowerment and liberation of its masses and creating stronger ethnic harmony.     

Open and distance education as social practice

This paper explores distance education as social practice by drawing on theories of communication and sociolinguistics. Language is fundamental to all social situations including open and distance educational contexts. It is through language that teachers construct texts which indicate student learning intentions; and it is through language that students reconstruct these intended meanings and give expression to them.

The paper argues that success as an open or distance education teacher or student is dependent on expertise in the linguistic demands of the educational context. Though some of these demands are common with traditional forms of education, open and distance contexts add another level of complexity. In particular, the paper advocates a consideration of discourses as fundamental.     

The coming of the new distance educators in the United States: the telecommunications generation takes off

The progress of video telconferencing in American education offers striking evidence of some of the wider effects that telecommunications promises to have on distance education. The term ‘distance education’ itself is taking on broad new meanings that separate it from traditional correspondence study. The growing acceptance of video telecommunications foreshadows the coming of a new generation of distance educators who see themselves as having less in common with correspondence study professionals than with each other.

Video applications to education are galvanizing educational structures in the United States, bringing profound change to every level. The impetus for this proliferating activity and the transformation that it is bringing lies neither with traditional distance educators nor, for the most pan, with higher education as a whole. The forces driving these developments are highly fluid but can be traced to an array of societal demands and an emerging perception of learners' needs that is ushering the users of technology into roles formerly held by distance educators. Above all, these forces give every indication of insuring that the new image of distance education will not only be pervasive but will be reflected on a video screen.     

能力为本的专业培养方案暨课程体系开发模式分析

专业培养方案是专业人才培养的蓝图和总体设计,它的优劣决定了人才培养质量。目前我国远程教育实践缺少适用于远程教育领域的专业培养方案和课程体系开发方法,大多沿用传统高校以学科需求为主的专业培养方案,但这没有体现应用型人才培养的特点和目的。因此需要开发出既符合社会实践需求,又适合成人远程学习者的专业课程体系,从而更好地为应用型人才培养、为远程教育人才培养服务。以能力为本的课程体系开发模式可以分为典型的三类：基于岗位能力的开发模式、基于典型工作任务的开发模式和基于角色的开发模式。三种开发模式均采用了工作分析的思想,重点关注岗位对人才的能力需求,注重技能培养而容易忽视知识的系统性。但基于典型工作任务分析的开发模式由于有着较为扎实的理论基础,开发出的课程体系更加系统,且兼顾了技能和知识的培养,对实践的适用面更广,对远程教育院校开发＂能力为本＂的培养方案暨课程体系有着极大的借鉴作用。但是其仍然有着不可忽视的弱点或＂盲区＂——对于工作过程较模糊、岗位不明确的专业不适用,因此并不能照搬到远程教育领域。     

On the margins or at the center? Distance education in higher education

Abstract

This reflection focuses on the position of distance education in today’s global higher education. Firstly, it identifies three types of convergence of distance and campus-based education – dual mode, add-on/blended, and full convergence – arguing that the last type has yet to be fully realized due to the complexities involved. It then critiques the interplay between the two, concluding that despite being influenced by campus-based instructional delivery in its early days, distance education is now influencing campus-based education. Implications of convergence are also discussed. Arguably, distance education universities should be proud of the increasing presence of distance education in campus-based universities and have confidence in maintaining their advantages. As for campus-based universities, a systems approach is needed if they intend to take advantage of this ‘unorthodox’ mode of education. Finally, it is suggested that both campus-based education and distance education are at the center of higher education because they are now equally conventional.     

利用现代远程教育手段发展继续教育的思考

继续教育在世界范围内的发展很快，但目前国际国内对于继续教育的概念界定还不一致。从这项多样化的概念描述中可以得出继续教育的基本特征。我国继续教育的发展起步晚，发展快，问题也很明显。针对这些问题，利用现代远程教育手段发展继续教育具有很多的优势。从发展决策、组织管理和教学的宏观、中观、微观三个层面审视，利用现代远程教育手段发展继续教育的途径或对策是明朗的。