Drawing upon cultural-historical activity theory, this research analyzed the structural contradictions existing in a variety of educational activities among a group of alienated adult students in Korea National Open University (KNOU). Despite KNOU's quantitative development in student enrollment, the contradictions shed light on how the…

Higher education in Tanzania like in many other Sub-Saharan countries suffers from unavailability of quality teaching and learning resources due to lack of tradition, competence, and experience to develop such resources. Nevertheless, there are thousands of open educational resources (OER) freely available in the public domain that can potentially…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a recent addition to the range of online learning options. Since 2008, MOOCs have been run by a variety of public and elite universities, especially in North America. Many academics have taken interest in MOOCs recognising the potential to deliver education around the globe on an unprecedented scale; some of…

Higher education, and more specifically, distance education, is in the midst of a rapidly changing environment. Higher education institutions increasingly rely on the harvesting and analyses of student data to inform key strategic decisions across a wide range of issues, including marketing, enrolment, curriculum development, the appointment of…

The open educational resources (OER) movement has gained momentum in the past few years. With this new drive towards making knowledge open and accessible, a large number of OER repositories have been established and made available online throughout the world. However, the inability of existing search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to…

Distance learning is seen as the obvious answer for remote learners, and the use of online media is expected to overcome any access difficulties imposed by geographical distance. However, this belief may be obscuring our understanding of the role that location and individual circumstances have in shaping student experience. This paper explores the…

Openness has been a feature of higher education for many decades, particularly through the establishment of open universities, although there remain debates about what openness means in practice. Digital technologies, some based on open principles, and digital content, aided by open licences, have both contributed recently to an extension of what…

This paper presents research on a convenience sample of the Open University of Sri Lanka's engineering faculty. Examined in this research are faculty's opinions on the instructional strategies they use to teach engineering courses at a distance. First, this paper details the pedagogical strategies used by the faculty, which is then followed by an…

The governments of China and South Korea have supported the development of distance education both legislatively and financially. The use of traditional media for this purpose has been successful in both countries, though the evolution to Internet-based education has been only partially successful. This report describes this process in terms of…

The successful development of mobile learning is dependent on human factors in the use of new mobile and wireless technologies. The majority of mobile learning activity continues to take place on devices that were not designed with educational applications in mind, and usability issues are often reported. The paper reflects on progress in…

Student retention in open and distance learning (ODL) is comparatively poor to traditional education and, in some contexts, embarrassingly low. Literature on the subject of student retention in ODL indicates that even when interventions are designed and undertaken to improve student retention, they tend to fall short. Moreover, this area has not…

In the West African Region of Africa, the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is the first full fledged university that operates in an exclusively open and distance learning (ODL) mode of education. NOUN focuses mainly on open and distance teaching and learning system, and delivers its courses materials via print in conjunction with…

The challenges to teacher educators in sub-Saharan Africa are acute. This paper describes how the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) consortium is working within institutional and national policy systems to support school-based teacher professional development. The TESSA consortium (13 African institutions and 5 international…

This article examines the relationship between the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and learning and teaching, particularly in distance education contexts. We argue that environmental changes (societal, educational, and technological) make it necessary to adapt systems and practices that are no longer appropriate. The need…

Open and distance learning (ODL) is increasingly being regarded as a viable policy option for developing countries with limited educational resources for buildings, books and trained teachers, seeking to increase accessibility for large numbers of learners in education and training opportunities. Advocates of ODL as an appropriate solution to…