Open Universities: A Comparative Approach
Tony Kaye and Greville Rumble

Context:
In this article the authors compare different uses of distance education methods for postsecondary education. They also raise significant issues facing higher distance education and discuss some likely future trends.

Source:
Kaye, Tony, and Greville Rumble. 1991. "Open Universities: A Comparative Approach." Prospects 21(2): 214-26.

Copyright:
Reproduced with permission from Prospects.

This article is an analysis of the use of distance education methods for post-secondary education, written shortly after the fifteenth World Conference of the International Council for Distance Education (ICDE), held in Caracas in November 1990. The proceedings (Croft et al. 1990; Villaroel and Pereira, 1990) of this meeting, attended by representatives from a very large number of distance teaching institutions and open learning projects throughout the world, demonstrate clearly the great diversity of pedagogies, resources, curricula, media, and organizational structures which characterize the uses of distance education methods in post-secondary education. It has become customary, since a review published by UNESCO some sixteen years ago (MacKenzie et al., 1975), to group such diverse projects together under the banner of 'open learning'; since then a number of new institutions called 'open universities' have been established (some following the lead of the British Open University) to cater specifically f or external or distance students. This article reviews these developments, and makes some predictions about likely future trends. It also points out the limitations of trying to draw comparisons between educational projects which are, in reality, often very different from each other, even within a single country or region.

We do not develop lengthy definitions of the terms 'distance education' and 'open learning' in this article. This has been done elsewhere (for recent reviews, see Kaye, 1988, and Rumble, 1989). It is sufficient to say that we consider distance education as including any organized forms of education in which attendance at a class, tutorial, lecture, or any other form of face-to-face interaction between students and teachers carried out at the same time and in the same place, is not the primary learning mode. Should this sound too negative, we could turn it on its head and define distance education as encompassing those forms of instruction in which independent study of specially prepared learning materials is the primary learning mode, and in which the roles of 'teacher' are split between course developers, who design and prepare the learning materials, and tutors, who provide support for the distance student, act as mediators between the institution and the student, and usually evaluate and grade students' work. Distance education institutions can be described as more 'open' than many traditional institutions for a number of reasons specifically arising from the emphasis on independent study: easier access for geographically remote students, flexibility of self-paced study, publicly available learning materials, etc. However, they are not necessarily more 'open' in terms of entry requirements, registration fees, curricula, or any other policy-related matters.

The main purpose of this article is to draw some comparisons between the different ways in which distance education methods have been used for post-secondary education (regardless of whether the words 'open' or 'university' appear in the title of the organizations concerned). We do not attempt to compare the relative quality or effectiveness of distance education systems and campus-based systems. Quality and effectiveness are complex issues. Direct comparisons between traditional and distance teaching institutions are often hard to make: there are curricular differences; the nature of the student population is different; the teaching and learning methods and the conditions of study are different; mature students may be admitted with non-traditional or even no prior educational qualifications, and may have very different expectations as to their educational aims and the way in which they will satisfy them.

Distance teaching methods have been used for over a century for post-secondary and higher education, and the ICDE has recently estimated that there are over 10 million students currently taking degree courses at a distance. There is no question that these methods can be effective, provided that the materials are of adequate quality, the course developers and tutors are competent, the students are motivated, and the necessary resources are made available. In these respects, the picture is little different from that in the traditional education sector—essentially the same variables determine success or failure.

The development of distance education

The first generation of distance education (largely based on correspondence tuition), saw a number of purpose-built distance teaching in-stitutions at the post-secondary level: an Institute for Teaching by Correspondence was established in Russia as early as 1850, and a number of correspondence-teaching polytechnical institutes came into existence in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Other early examples of purpose-built providers of post-secondary distance education courses include the Toussaint and Langenscheidt Institute in Berlin (established in 1856, and a pioneer in language teaching by correspondence) and the Swedish Liber Hermods Institute, established in 1898, and at times enrolling over 150,000 students each year.

In addition to institutions exclusively devoted to distance teaching, for many years universities whose main task was to teach traditional students by traditional means, using lectures, seminars and tutorials, had sought to extend their boundaries to meet the needs of part-time adult students and those of normal entry age who for one reason or another—geographical, social, or personal—could not study on-campus. The first tentative steps were made by the University of London which from 1858 allowed qualified candidates to be admitted for degree studies without the necessity of following a course of instruction at one of its approved colleges. This left it open for 'external students' (as they came to be called in 1898) to seek tuition from private correspondence colleges such as University Correspondence College and Wolsey Hall. The logical development was for the university itself to provide correspondence tuition to 'external' students. The first steps were taken not by the University of London but by universities in the United States (Illinois State University 1874; University of Chicago, 1891; University of Wisconsin, 1906), Canada (Queen's University, 1889), Australia (University of Queensland, 1911) and subsequently copied by many hundreds of higher education institutions both in these and other countries (witness the development of Correspondence Directorates at Indian universities, external studies at Australian and anglophone African universities, universidades abiertas in Latin American universities, and independent studies at universities in the United States.

A new pattern of distance education was first given visibility in the higher education world by the establishment of the British Open University over twenty years ago. Given the subsequent development of open universities in other countries, it is easy to forget how innovative the British Open University seemed at the time. As Cyril Houle, Professor of Education at the University of Chicago commented: 'For some not-easily-defined reason, the Open University instantly became a worldwide topic of concern ... among both educators and the general public' (Houle, 1974, p. 35). The originality of the British Open University lay in the fact that it gave prominence to a second generation of distance education for home-based students, based on the combination of correspondence tuition, face-to-face tutorials, and the use of broadcast media as well as print, within the framework of a publicly funded institution offering its own degrees.

In making general statements about distance teaching at university level, one should bear in mind that there are major differences in scale, curricula, pedagogical approaches and resource levels, between the many different institutions involved throughout the world (see Daniel (1987) for a recent 'world tour' of distance education). One could even ask whether it makes sense to draw any comparisons at all between, say, the Chinese Central Radio and Television University (which teaches hundreds of thousands of students mainly through broadcasting TV recordings of lectures to viewing groups in factories and offices), the Soviet universities operating a 'consultation' model (with around 1.5 million students spending 30 percent of their study time in face-to-face meetings) and the German Fernuniversität (which uses print-based courses, some backed up with audio and video cassettes, for 37,000 home-based independent learners), simply on the grounds that they happen to be 'distance teaching' institutions. A ny generalizations made in the remainder of this article should be understood in this context.

Some achievements of distance higher education

In many ways institutions of the kind refer by Rumble and Harry (1982) as 'distance it teaching universities' (i.e. institutions mandate teach by distance means, and often called 'open universities') have received a disproportionate amount of attention, compared to the far more common 'mixed mode' institutions which teach by both distance and traditional means, and reach both remote and campus-based students. Together, these very different kinds of institutions, operating in diverse social, cultural and economic environments, have achieved remarkable successes.

The use of distance teaching methods enabled universities to teach far more students than they would otherwise have been able to do. Once courses have been written, they can over a number of years be used to teach many thousands of students. Distance education methods open up opportunities. A quarter of all university and college graduates in the former German Democratic Republic had attained their qualifications through distance studies (Möhle, 1988, p. 325). In Asia, the late 1970s and 1980s, were marked by the foundation of new distance teaching universities such as the Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand, which has had an accumulated enrolment of over 500,000 students, and produced over 78,000 graduates; the Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan, which had almost 120,000 students in 1986; and the Indira Gandhi Open University in India, which has a potential annual enrolment of 700,000 students (Taylor and Sharma, 1990). These and other similar institutions increased access to higher education.

While distance teaching methods enable universities to teach students who live at a great distance from the institution, geographical remoteness from students is not a necessary feature of this kind of education. The main characteristic is that learning takes place in the absence of a teacher, so that teaching needs to be in some ways mediated. There is nothing intrinsically odd in a campus-based student studying by distance means, i.e. the bulk of learning is from media and not from sitting in the presence of the teacher. If we think in these terms, we can see how distance education methods can greatly increase the number of students traditional institutions cater for.

Nevertheless, distance education methods do enable institutions to overcome barriers to access, arising from geographical remoteness (e.g. the University of Queensland External Studies Division and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain) and inability to attend traditional campus-based universities. The British Open University, for example, has over 3,000 students with disabilities. Many would be unable to attend a traditional university. The Allama Iqbal Open University meets the needs of women in purdah. The Extension Course Institute of the Air University, Montgomery, Alabama (established in 1950) offered technical and professional correspondence courses to US Air Force reservists and personnel on active duty. Above all, distance education systems, by utilizing methods which allow students to study in a place and time of their own choosing, have enabled many millions of individuals who could not have attended a traditional day- or evening-based system to take higher education courses.< /P>

Universities using distance teaching methods have thus provided opportunities to qualified school-leavers who, for whatever reason, were unable to take traditional higher education courses at the normal time (ie. post-school), and who have welcomed the opportunity to have a 'second chance' at higher education.

In China the establishment of the Central Radio and Television University was seen as a means of providing a way of educating the many young people whose natural educational development had been disrupted during the cultural revolution (Dieuzeide, 1985, p. 42), while the College of Adult and Distance Education at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, has as its primary objective the education of 'the large majority of adults who were denied higher education opportunities during the colonial circumstances' (Otiende, 1988, p. 351).

The commitment to openness may be linked to the removal of the normal minimum educational qualifications for entry to higher education, as in the case of the British Open University, although, in fact most higher distance education throughout the world is not 'open learning' in this sense. However, distance teaching universities have often implemented innovative academic policies, including modular course structures, a choice of paced and unpaced courses, mixed assessment based on both continuous and final assessment, and considerable freedom for students to choose courses of their own liking, rather than follow heavily prescribed curricula.

Distance education has played a major part in the in-service training and professional upgrading of teachers. Particularly in Asian, African, and Latin American countries, the expansion of education in response to population growth and increasing participation rates has posed major problems for educational planners. The population of Kenya is expected to double in 18 years, that of the United Republic of Tanzania in 20 years, that of Nigeria and the Philippines in 25 years. (In contrast, it will take 462 years for the population of the United Kingdom to double at its current rate of growth.) Distance education is one way of training untrained teachers—or upgrading existing teachers—without taking them out of the classroom, and many countries have been quick to seize the opportunity presented them, with in-service teacher training projects to be found, for example, in Botswana, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Swaziland, Thailand and the United Republic of Tanzania. In many, though not all, of these countries the responsibility for delivery of such projects rests with the universities. Similar in-service training courses are also to be found in many of the wealthier countries.

Universities also have a significant role to play in other areas of vocational training. For example, in the former German Democratic Republic 'the main factor influencing higher education . . . is its applicability to economic activity (Möhle, 1988, p. 326). In China current policy in regard to higher education at a distance is based on the principle that 'the only goal of higher correspondence education' is 'to serve economic reconstruction' (Jianshu, 1988, p. 451). In the United Republic of Tanzania the National Correspondence Institute was established inter alia to contribute to manpower development in the country, and to help accelerate national development (Kiyenze, 1988, p. 284). The National Open University, Taiwan, founded in 1986, has as one of its aims the provision of on-the-job training at university level (Chen, 1988, p. 164).

Distance education is believed to be a means of reducing the costs of education and training. Although the establishment of distance teaching institutions and their infrastructure, and the investment in the development of course materials, can be very significant, these costs can be spread over very large numbers of students. The direct costs of teaching are, however, generally lower than those found in traditional systems. As a result the high capital investment can be offset by reduced expenditure on teachers (labour), with the result that, provided student numbers are high enough, average costs are lower than (perhaps up to a third of the value of) those found in traditional institutions. A number of studies have shown that distance education can be cheaper than traditional methods of higher education: for example, Wagner (1980) on the British Open University, Muta and Sakamoto (1989) on the Japanese University of the Air, Guadamuz Sandoval (1988) on the Universidad Estatal a Distancia, Costa Rica, and Nielsen (1990) on the effectiveness of in-service teacher training projects in a number of countries.

However, these results should be interpreted with great care, for a wide range of reasons. Firstly, one is not always comparing like with like (distance learners may be older, or more highly motivated than campus-based students; curricula may be different; distance learning may be the only way of reaching certain groups such as practising teachers etc.). Secondly, it is not always clear how infrastructure costs for distance learning should be allocated (the British Open University uses existing postal and broadcasting services, and the staff and facilities of other universities and polytechnics, at marginal cost to itself). Finally, of course, the cost of a distance learning system—as of a conventional system—depends in large measure on the resources invested. The British Open University is much better resourced, and hence more costly than say, the Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan, even though both institutions cater for comparable numbers of students. Even though the British O pen University's unit costs per graduate are less than those for a traditional university student, they are probably not very much less than those of a graduate taking a degree course at a polytechnic in the United Kingdom.

The evidence on effectiveness is mixed. For years, correspondance education had a bad reputation. Drop-out rates were often higher than in traditional forms of education. The foundation of distance teaching universities was often greeted with considerable scepticism. On the other hand, individual distance teaching universities have produced many thousands of graduates, notwithstanding the fact that, in some cases a higher proportion of their students fail to graduate than is the case in traditional institutions offering similar courses. However, amongst the factors determining completion or success rates, it is virtually impossible to isolate those which are specifically related to the form of education (distance or campus-based), even when similar curricula and assessment procedures are being compared. Student characteristics (age, motivation, location, economic level) may differ, as may the level of involvement (campus-based students are often studying full- time, distance learners generally a re part-time students). Drop-out and repeater rates can be high in both distance and campus-based institutions: the factors which influence their level are more likely to be associated with assessment policies and the quality and extent of student support than the teaching method per se. Clearly, a correspondence student getting no help from a tutor or other students is more likely to drop out than a student taking an equivalent course at a well-staffed campus university; by the same token, a distance learner working with good quality self-study materials, with a tutor and other students available over the telephone and at regular study centre meetings, may be less likely to drop out than a student whose sole source of education is attendance at overcrowded lectures.

Some significant issues facing higher distance education

A number of criticisms can be made of current distance education methods, especially if one is comparing them to some idealized campus-based provision (small groups of students learning from motivated and experienced teachers, with access to libraries, laboratories, computers, etc.). The strength or significance of these criticisms will vary from one culture or situation to another, but they can be summarized as follows:

• The limited opportunities for discussion, both between students and with tutors and other resource people: even when opportunities for discussion with tutors are provided, the people filling the tutor roles are rarely the same as the people who prepared the distance study materials, so opportunities for discussion with 'master teachers' are rare.
  
  
• The relative inflexibility of distance learning courses in catering for individual needs, interests and experiences: the distance learner, once embarked on a course, has little or no opportunity to change its direction, or influence what is taught (this may also, in fact, be the case in many conventionally taught courses, but in a distance system, it is a constraint of the teaching method per se, rather than of institutional policy or the teacher's inclination).
  
  
• The high cost of producing, modifying and updating mass-produced print and audio-visual distance learning materials; the higher the quality of these materials, the more they cost to produce, and the greater is the temptation to enrol as many students as possible on the same courses, and to re-use the materials in the same form for many years; indeed, the entire cost structure of distance education is based on the resultant economies of scale.
  
  
• The need to rely on infrastructure for communications (post, telephone, transport, etc.) and for some aspects of materials production (printing, broadcast production, etc.), which are outside the control of the institution and of its teachers, and whose malfunctioning can jeopardize the quality and effectiveness of provision.
  
  

The extent to which these factors—endemic to many current distance teaching universities—are seen as disadvantages will vary from one context to another, and will depend very much on the ultimate purpose of the distance education project. The second and third factors above might not be drawbacks for a country-wide in-service teacher training programme in a new national curriculum, planned to run over a five-year period, although they would be in the context of, say, an information technology course for up-dating managers from different types of organizations and companies. And the importance assigned to dialogue in formal educational systems varies significantly from one culture to another—as it does from one educational philosophy or discipline to another within the same culture.

DIALOGUE AND INTERACTIVITY

The limited provision for dialogue in many distance education systems is seen as a major disadvantage by those with a humanistic vision of education, and is more difficult to remedy than in a traditional campus-based system where it is in principle possible to re-arrange teaching methods to allow for more seminars and other group activities, if the need arises. Harris (1987, p. 137) has argued that the 'conventions of "good writing" and "good broadcasting" found in distance education systems pre-construct a largely passive student'. What is important in higher education 'is argument between people, unconstrained discussions which raise "validity claims" of several types, and which settle these claims only by the force of the better argument'. For Harris, 'the most obvious medium for these discussions is face-to-face contact'—although he acknowledges that the mere presence of such discussion does not guarantee 'democratic discussions' of the kind which he identifies 'as the kernel of the critical role of the university'.

Distance education course developers can build in self-assessment questions which can encourage students to enter into a discussion with themselves. Holmberg (1989, pp. 43–6) writes of the need to incorporate what he calls guided didactic conversation into distance teaching materials. However, Harris (1987, p. 119), and Lockwood (1989, pp. 210–14) have challenged the extent to which students do in fact make use of self-assessment questions and student activities to engage in a 'discourse' with their materials. And in any event, such self-testing procedures, although possibly useful for checking on acquisition of skills and knowledge, are no substitute for interactive discussion with other students and teachers.

In this context, the feedback provided by correspondence tuition gains considerable importance Unfortunately, the quality and extent of such written feedback may not be very good, and it may arrive too long after the event for the student to be able to incorporate it into his understandings. Research (Rekkedal, 1983) also shows that the longer the delay between the submission of an assignment and receipt of comments on it the higher the drop-out rate.

Recognition of the importance of more immediate forms of two-way communication than can be provided by the postal service has led many distance teaching institutions to incorporate some face-to-face teaching into their systems. This is often used as a means of ensuring that the students have understood the teaching materials and are as prepared as can be for the examination. A similar function is undertaken by telephone teaching (either one-to-one, or, using conference call systems, one-to-a number of students), and, in some instances, by computer-mediated communication, through one-to-one electronic mail and group-based computer conferencing (Mason and Kaye, 1989).

Unfortunately, the costs of interacting are high. As the amount of face-to-face and technology-mediated tuition and interpersonal communication increases, so the direct cost per student increases. Ultimately this will undermine the potential cost advantage of distance education, which stems from the substitution of capital (locked up in the development of course materials and the technical infrastructure needed for production and distribution) for the labour of classroom teachers.

MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURE

In countries where distance education is being used to meet high priority development needs, concern over the level of dialogue in the system, or the cost of updating material, or of tailoring it to individual needs, might seem at first sight a luxury, especially if there are not enough teachers available to meet educational needs through traditional methods. However, as Zahlan has pointed out, 'one of the difficulties faced by Third World countries is the weakness of the activities that digest, criticize, process, and market knowledge' (Zahlan, 1988, p. 83). The temptations can be strong to import, often without adaptation, distance teaching material produced elsewhere. In some cases, where the courses are relevant to local needs, such an approach might be defensible (e.g. the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong). In other cases, the course materials may be irrelevant to these needs, the process of adapting them might be too complex, and they might not be accompanied by the student support services for which they were designed. Nevertheless, where local expertise and resources for producing multi-media distance teaching materials at university level do not exist, the temptation to buy in and adapt material produced elsewhere can be great.

But the origin or development of teaching materials is only one problem faced by many countries wishing to expand educational provision through distance education methods. Speaking of distance education in Africa, Jenkins (1989, p. 48) has indicated that 'few politicians and ministry of education officials have demonstrated any strong commitment to distance education. Despite its intensive use, in most countries it has low status and remains on the periphery'. As a result, funding is often insufficient. As Jenkins comments elsewhere, 'the barriers to improvement in distance education in many cases are to do with resources' (Jenkins, 1990, p. 38).

Such poverty is reflected in the lack of printing capacity, the poor maintenance of printing machinery, and the problems posed by the high cost of paper referred to by Kiyenze (1988) in respect of distance education in the United Republic of Tanzania and the problems of understaffing referred to by Siaciwena (1988, p. 202) in respect of the distance teaching system at the University of Zambia. Further problems may be engendered by the poor communications infrastructure within a country: in Zambia, for example, the majority of roads are not all-weather roads, and the telephone system cannot be relied upon to provide an effective student support system (Siaciwena, 1988, pp. 203, 204). Travel may be expensive and time-consuming, as in Indonesia (Setijadi, 1988, p. 194). The recruitment and training of qualified staff may be difficult, as in Indonesia (Setijadi, 1988, P. 195) and Zambia (Siaciwena, 1988, p. 205). Finally, not all systems are cost-effective, high quality, mass education systems. The number of s tudents on the University of Papua New Guinea extension studies programme was so low that it 'operates like a handicraft industry rather than a mass production device' (Kaeley, 1978, p. 33). Nor are all systems necessarily cost-effective, in comparison with traditional systems. Yet, despite such reservations, there is plenty of evidence that distance education has contributed much to the development of higher education. Daniel (1987, pp. 30–1) points out that both individual countries and international organizations such as the World Bank appear satisfied with the results of investment in higher distance education' and the very fact that distance education projects have a commitment to formative evaluation of their programmes means that most programmes have an impressive array of statistics about their operation and can often be shown to be self-improving systems.'

Likely future trends

It is, of course, difficult to look into the future, but in this final section we shall attempt to identify what we see as some of the trends in the development of higher education at a distance over the next few years.

A PHASE OF CONSOLIDATION AND LIMITED GROWTH

Firstly, it seems likely that the well-established national open universities to be found in many European, Asian and Latin American countries will continue to function in much the same way as they have done in the past, with the addition of new programmes and target groups in response to social, economic, political and market needs. The same applies to the extension/correspondence studies departments of conventional universities. In some cases, existing institutions may be merged with others (as has happened with the creation of the Open Learning Agency in British Columbia—an amalgam of three pre-existent distance teaching organizations).

In some countries, however, the established distance teaching universities will be competing for students with campus-based institutions trying to increase their economic viability by widening access to part-time study, through evening classes, open learning courses, and various forms of distance education. Competition for the part-time (paying) adult student has increased recently, as governments reduce funding for education. So institutions will have to decide whether to reduce their expenditure, widen their student base, or increase their fees to compensate for loss of government support. The last course of action will undoubtedly reduce the ability of deprived sectors of the community to take advantage of a form of education which, above all others, seems to cater for their needs. More significantly, institutions will find themselves offering those courses for which there is a ready commercial market. Examples might include business studies, law and languages. The broad-based curriculum found in many d istance teaching universities may be threatened.

The pressure to reduce costs may lead to changes in the range of media used for distance education, which will become apparent in different ways. Precisely at the time when the potential range of media is increasing rapidly, we already see institutions in some poorer countries who cannot afford to make use of the media now available in the wealthier countries, and for whom print and correspondence tuition, supported by audio, is likely to remain the basic strategy in the immediate future. In other cases, budgetary pressure is likely to lead to a reduction in the level and quality of student support services such as tutorials, correspondence tuition and counselling, which in turn will lead to an increase in drop-out rates (Paul, 1988) and an overall lowering of the effectiveness of the system.

The generally depressed economic climate will, of course, have other effects. For some years now, educational budgets have been reduced or have had to be spread further, with consequential falls in the unit of resource (the average amount of money provided for education per student). It seems unlikely that this will change. On the face of it, this appears to make distance education, with its potential economies of scale, an attractive proposition. Yet there are financial reasons why this may not happen. Firstly, this would imply a switch in resources, from traditional to distance education sectors. Powerful vested interests will resist such moves. Unless more politicians begin to see distance education as a viable alternative to traditional forms of higher education, the change is unlikely to occur. Secondly, the high initial cost of setting up new institutions makes it likely that there will be further pressure on traditional universities to engage in distance education-this will be seen as a cheaper and less risky alternative. So, with a few isolated exceptions such as the Vietnamese Peoples' Open University (Arger and Tran, 1990), we do not feel that there is likely to be, in the 1990s, the appearance of a second wave of new 'open universities' comparable to that of the last two decades.

NETWORKING AND THE 'DISTRIBUTED CLASSROOM' MODEL

The dominant pedagogy of many distance teaching universities and institutions is based on independent study of print (and some multi-media) materials, with fairly minimal levels of student support through correspondence tuition and occasional face-to-face meetings. Alongside the continuing (if economically restricted) activities of the institutions based on this model, we think it is likely there will be an increase over the next few years in the number of projects using different pedagogical models of distance education—models which put more emphasis on learning in groups, on networking (in the broad sense), and in a more central role for the individual teacher. In this last respect, they contrast strongly with the conventional 'open university' model, where the individual teachers are subsumed into the relative anonymity of the course team (the course developers who prepare the self-study materials), and local tutors play essentially a remedial and evaluative role.

The growth of this new generation of projects—most of which are appearing in the economically developed countries—can be related to a number of factors:

• Wider access to new technology for students (e.g. telephones, home computers, modems, facsimile machines) and for course developers and teachers (desk-top publishing, networking services, satellite broadcasting).
  
  
• Growing demand from industry and many service organizations for continuing education, re-training and updating of their staff.
  
  
• Increasing competition for part-time adult students, which has encouraged many traditional universities to widen their target audiences, often through the use of new technologies and/or through the establishment of consortia with industry and with training organizations.
  
  
• A move towards a 'post-Fordist' society, in which products are produced in more limited numbers aimed at increasingly segmented markets, and there is an increased consciousness of the need to respond to the individual consumer; for distance learning,¹ this presupposes a greater commitment to addressing the needs of the individual learner, as flexibly as possible (Rumble, 1990).

What many of these projects are doing, effectively, is to use communications technology to 'distribute' the classroom teacher, through radio, audio-conferencing, satellite TV transmissions of lectures, and, more recently, computer conferencing (see, for example, Bacsich et al., 1986). This is not new—the model of groups of learners coming together during a radio or TV broadcast, and then discussing the broadcast material amongst themselves under the guidance of a local animateur or tutor, is one that has been used for many years at a variety of levels. Examples include the use of radio in Nicaragua, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Senegal and Kenya I (Jamison et al., 1978), and in the Canary Islands (Cepeda, 1982); examples at the higher education level include the use of satellite television to broadcast lectures to groups distributed over a wide area, such as at the Chinese Central Radio and Television University and the China TV Teacher College (Fuwen Gao and Weiwei Li, 1990; Zhao Yuhui, 1 988), or the National Technological University in the United States (Sarchet and Baldwin, 1990). The University of Wisconsin has been using audio-conferencing for nearly thirty years (recently supplemented with slow-scan 'TV') through a state-wide Educational Telephone Network to allow groups of up to 10 students to interact with teachers from 170 different learning sites.

In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of interest in 'tech 'technology-based' distance education projects. Examples cited in a recent study (Open University, 1990) include:

• IBM's use of two-way video via satellite for in-house training and up-dating, both in the United States and in Europe.
  
  
• Rio Salado Community College in Arizona, which has distance classes linked both through audio-conferencing and computer conferencing.
  
  
• The Open Learning Agency in Vancouver, which runs networks for both audio-conferencing and audio-graphic conferencing.
  
  
• The French Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers which uses school computer rooms for networked evening classes, enabling students to download teaching material from a central computer in Nantes, and to interact with their teacher through electronic mail.
  
  
• A course for health care professionals in Denmark, run entirely through computer conferencing, with students and teachers connecting to the system from personal computers in homes and offices.
  
  

Other examples could be cited, especially in the domain of computer networking (see, for example, Mason, 1990). Computer conferencing has been heralded as 'third generation distance education', based on the active creation of new knowledge and understandings by groups learning together (Nipper, 1989), or as representing a 'new domain' for education, qualitatively different from both classroom instruction and traditional distance education (Harasim, 1990).

One of the attractions of such technology based projects is that—assuming the students have access to the necessary equipment—it is possible for teachers in traditional institutions (or company training departments) to introduce and run new courses and programmes far more rapidly and flexibly than would otherwise be possible, either through traditional face-to-face teaching or through traditional distance education. This is a key factor for EuroPACE, for example, which (like the National Technological University) produces and transmits by satellite to reception sites throughout Europe up-to-date videos of lectures and demonstrations by experts in fields such as engineering, electronics and telecommunications. These transmissions are supported by desk-top published print materials and a computer conferencing network. Much less time and investment is required to film experienced teachers in their classrooms, or to ask them to teach a group using computer conferencing or audio-conferencing, than is needed to assemble a course team to produce a package of self-study materials for independent learners.

Distance educators from open universities wedded to the course-team approach—and the quality control that this can guarantee—might be sceptical about the pedagogical and academic quality of 'talking head' television programmes, of the often meandering discussions which are common in computer conferences, or of the speed and ease with which individual teachers can now produce professional-looking print materials with desk-top publishing packages on a personal computer. However, the fact that courses based on these technologies are generally for groups of learners, who can easily discuss the course amongst themselves and with a tutor, means that the same painstaking attention to detail that is required in self-study material for isolated learners is perhaps not so critical. Furthermore, as in a classroom situation, adjustments can be made relatively easily—something which is much more problematic in the conventional mass distance education course.

Conclusion

Learn one-fourth from the teacher,
One-fourth from self-study,
One-fourth from fellow-pupils and
One-fourth while applying knowledge
from time to time.
(Sanskrit verse quoted by Gomathi Mani, 1990, p. 129.)

In general, we believe that the existing distance teaching universities will continue to thrive wherever they fill a clear need which is not being met by other institutions. Many of these institutions will probably continue teaching successfully in the ways they have done in the past—whether the main emphasis in particular cases is on the use of print-based independent study materials, or on group viewing of broadcast lectures, or on face-to-face meetings supplemented with private study.

However, we believe that there will be increasing pressure from conventional higher education institutions for a share of the adult, part-time student market—in fact it is the very success of distance education and open learning methods over the last two decades that has encouraged other institutions to adopt them. It may well be the case that the increasing use of self-study and distance or open learning materials in campus-based institutions illustrates a convergence of distance education and traditional classroom-based pedagogies (Smith and Kelly, 1987). One thing is clear: many conventional institutions are now embarking on distance teaching, producing their own flexible open learning materials (print, audio-visual and computer-based), and using new technologies to provide 'distributed classrooms'. And a significant number of traditional open universities in Europe and elsewhere have started using electronic publishing, computer networking, and satellite delivery technologies in ways which might e ventually lead to major changes in the 'industrial' (mass production and delivery) model of distance education. The convergence of these technologies means, for example, that it is possible to use the same electronic medium for teacher-produced text and graphics, conferencing and information exchange between participants in a course, and data-bases of reference information. This is likely to have a major influence in the future on the cost structure of distance education, and on the potential for inter-institutional collaboration in course production and teaching.

We think it unlikely that a significant number of new open universities' (on the model of those set up in the 1970s and 1980s) will appear in the current decade. It is more likely that some new distance teaching universities will be set up as networked consortia, which, in the economically advanced countries at least, will make some use of computer networking and/or satellite technologies. In the European context, a number of such initiatives are already on the drawing board: these include a proposed French open university, and even a 'European Electronic University' (a pilot project of the Commission of the European Communities' DELTA programme). Whether such technological star-gazing will also result in a truly global university (Utsumi and Urbanawicz, 1990) remains to be seen! But the challenge is there, and it is one which calls into question the economic basis of many of the established distance teaching universities, for new technology developments, with their emphasis on flexibility and inc reased responsiveness to student needs, are often likely to lead to increases in student-related costs. This implies a shift in funding from front-end course materials development and production to better and more comprehensive support services for students. If this results in greater flexibility and a more balanced mix of independent study, group interaction and student-teacher contact than is to be found in either the conventional lecture-based mode of higher education, or in the traditional independent-study mode characteristic of many 'open universities', then the overall quality of students' learning experiences will be improved. The challenge in achieving this goal will be to maintain the best features of the 'industrial' model of distance education (quality control, cost-effectiveness, attention to the needs of the independent learner) with the best features of the new technologies—particularly those of flexibility, interactivity, co-operation and immediacy.

Note

1. Distance education institutions on the Open University model, with their mass production and delivery systems, have been seen as 'Fordist' organizations—that is, 'economic organizations designed to exploit economics of scale in assembly-line factories making standardized goods for homogeneous mass markets' (Hirst, 1989, p. 18).