Rethinking Distance in an Era of Online Learning

Open Praxis vol. 9 issue 4

“…Within the broad curriculum framework outlined above, institutions in Kenya and in Africa more widely, are subject to the same demands as in other parts of the world for programmes that are more flexibly designed for increasingly diverse learning needs and contexts in which open, distance and e-learning (ODeL) approaches need to be employed (Altbach, Reisberg & Rumbley, 2009;Blumenstyk, 2015;Evans & Pauling, 2010;Glennie & Mays, 2013). It was suggested to ANU, building on Educause (2010), Glennie and Mays (2009) and Lapovsky (u.d.…”

Designing and Developing Programmes in Open, Distance and e-Learning

“…In 2014, the Department of Higher Education and Training gazetted South Africa's first national distance education policy (DHET 2014) and in the same year, the Council on Higher Education published a good practice guide for distance education in a digital era (CHE 2014). These two documents reflect a growing integration of digital technologies in the provision of higher education that has begun to result in a blurring of boundaries between different modes of provision that could potentially obscure some of the quality issues peculiar to distance education provision (Glennie and Mays 2013). While it seems clear that technology has the potential to overcome some of the weaknesses of older models of distance education provision, particularly the limited opportunity for interaction in the correspondence model, it seems equally clear that opting to use technology to create more interactive and open-ended learning experiences requires conscious choices in the design phase that institutions will not necessarily make (Bates and Sangrá 2011).…”