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Single institutions and governments will continue to play a vital part in distance education. But with the growing potential, availability, and use of Internet technologies, the development of distance education is becoming an increasingly international affair. Distance education institutions have been among the leaders in developing and implementing schemes for institutional collaboration, often across national borders, and the trend toward such collaboration seems likely to accelerate. At the same time governments, particularly those in developing countries, have begun to encourage their institutions to enter into collaborative arrangements, as they recognize the possibilities of distance education as a mechanism for national and regional development. Further contributing to the trend of globalization has been the growing involvement of international agencies in the development of distance education systems, particularly in developing countries.
But internationalization raises some complicated issues, and distance educators and policymakers have had to review and modify their practices. In doing so, they need to know what problems other institutions and agencies have faced in confronting these issues. And they need to address questions such as these:
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