Alan Tait

Planning Student Support for Open and Distance Learning

This paper examines the various factors that need to be taken into account in the planning of student support in open and distance learning systems. The factors discussed arise from the characteristics of the students, the demands of academic programmes and courses, the geographical environment, the technological infrastructure, the scale of the programme, and the requirements of management. These factors interact in complex ways, such that while none can be ignored, none can be given overall priority. The elements stand in tension with each other, requiring tradeoffs that between them represent the core management achievement in the design of such systems. Given the differences faced by planners in different settings, it is not surprising that there can be no universal blueprint for the design of student support services. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the many factors that need to be taken into account.

Face-to-face and at a distance: The mediation of guidance and counselling through the new technologies

Abstract The hitherto widely-held assumption that the counselling interaction should be conducted face-to-face, while other activities within the overall guidance process could be supported by computer, is re-examined. Recent computer-mediated information and communications technologies are reviewed, and their implications for guidance and counselling as a whole are explored. While fears are still current that human relations will be mechanised through the use of the information and communications technologies, it is contended that human relations will be changed but not necessarily diminished. Comparisons are drawn with the ways in which open and distance learning have brought a re-examination of what is understood to be a ‘real’ teaching interaction. It is suggested that practitioners in the fields of guidance and counselling must similarly be prepared to manage radical change.

What are open universities for

This article proposes a framework within which the question as to the purposes of open universities should be examined. It argues that the question has become submerged over time through the establishment of so many open universities that have become natural elements in a higher education landscape rather than remaining radical and innovative institutions. The article looks at a number of innovative distance teaching higher education institutions from the nineteenth century through to the contemporary period, and examines case studies in a wide international range. The outcome of the argument is that open universities should articulate their purposes within a discourse of development, and engage with the ethical and political questions as to how development is understood and advanced.

Open and distance learning policy in the European Union 1985–1995

The key questions this article seeks to address are to establish what policies for open and distance learning for post-secondary education have been developed in the European Union over the last 10 years; how they have come into being; what explicit intentions they embody; what implicit and underlying roles in terms of social process such policies can be identified as playing; and what appropriate frameworks of analysis can be identified. From small beginnings in questions raised by Members of the European Parliament in 1985, open and distance learning begins to appear in policy documents and funding programmes in 1988 and reaches the significant position of being specifically mentioned in 1994 in the Maastricht Treaty of Union. Open and distance learning policy is demonstrated as reinforcing the ideological role that education and training play in the drive for economic success and competitiveness, and a range of frameworks for policy analysis are explored within the unique international regime that is the European Union. Further research is proposed as necessary within the European Union as education and training increase in importance as areas of activity.

United Kingdom—Commentary

I am grateful for the opportunity to add a commentary to Anne Gaskell’s very effective summary account of open, distance and e-learning in the UK. First of all, looking backwards so to speak, it is remarkable what a significant contribution major UK theorists have made to this field. The UK can claim Michael Moore, who was born and educated in the UK, and who worked at the Open University until his departure for Pennsylvania State University, whose seminal theory of transactional distance from 1971 is still cited. Similarly, the then Brit Tony Bates spent the first half of his career at the Open University where he invented the field of media and distance education, before leaving for British Columbia. We can also add Greville Rumble, who was the first scholar to examine the economics of distance education, and John Daniel, who like Moore and Bates was born and educated in the UK and spent more than a decade in leadership of the Open University. Daniel was the first to identify the crucial poles of interaction and independence in student behaviours, and went on to name and examine the phenomenon of the mega-universities. And no picture of distance education in the UK would be complete without recognition of the activist Michael Young, who invented the term ‘open university’ in 1962, and who set up the National Extension College which pioneered innovative practices that were influential on Open Universities everywhere. And still today the UK is producing major theorists in open education such as Martin Weller, and in learning analytics Bart Rientjes, both based at the Open University (the latter Dutch by nationality, it must be conceded). So the UK has made and continues to make a significant contribution to foundational thinking and practice, far above its size and significance in the world.