Musing on the memes of open and distance education

Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body, so memes (ideas, behaviours, and actions) transmit cultural ideas or practices from one mind to another through writing, speech, or other imitable phenomena. This paper considers the memes that influence the evolution of open and distance education. If the transmission is strong and a sufficient number of policy-makers, managers, or practitioners in various contexts are capable of faithful imitation, the meme pool will evolve to exploit these memes to the full. If the propagation is weak, this may give rise to little or no imitation of the necessary philosophical stances, service orientations, and operational capacities.     

Disabilities Information Flow: a disabilities information management system

The Disabilities Information Flow (DIF) project at the University of St Andrews has sought to provide a means of efficiently managing all student disabilities information within the institution and provide appropriate role‐based service interfaces for all staff who need to routinely interact with this information. This paper describes the software engineering processes used for the context analysis, design and implementation of the DIF.     

The Economics and Use of Video in Education,Particularly in Teaching at a Distance

Abstract

This short article is a resumé of a paper which will be presented at the ICEM Conference, ‘Media Efficiency 90’ in Vienna in October 1990.