Surprisingly, distance education is quite an old concept. Its origins date back to the first correspondence-based course, which took place via the postal service in Boston, USA, in the 18th century. Rapid technological developments, especially in video and audio streaming, have increased the availability of such courses and moved learning into the…

Predicting the future is a challenging task for music education, requiring both retrospection, analysis of current events, and foresight. This article examines several predictions from 2001 and challenges music educators to consider factors that may influence the future of teaching music in society.

The field of distance education is composed of a multiplicity of topics leading to a vast array of research literature. However, the research does not provide a chronological picture of the topics it addresses, making it difficult to develop an overview of the evolution and trends in the literature. To address this issue, a co-word analysis was…

This article discusses the role of open and distance learning to widen participation and promote social inclusion within Australian higher education, as well as the benefits that open educational resources (OER) could bring to that context. It also explores some of the most relevant social inclusion policies and related initiatives developed in…

The aim of this research study is to investigate the articles published between 2003-2007 in "Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology" ("TOJET") in order to reveal the trends and issues addressed in this electronic journal for the field of educational technology. The specific purposes of this article are to reveal: (1) the methodologies…

The World Wide Web is evolving in response to users who demand faster and more efficient access to information, portability, and reusability of digital objects between Web-based and computer-based applications and powerful communication, publication, collaboration, and teaching and learning tools. This article reviews current uses of Web-based…

This article presents an interview with Mark David Milliron, board chair of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, a trustee with Western Governors University, and a member of the advisory board for the University of Texas (UT) TeleCampus. He is also president and CEO of Catalyze Learning International, a private…

Differences in curriculum and teaching styles across disciplines in higher education courses are also evident in online courses. This study used two widely available sources of data, CMS tool usage logs and course evaluations, to analyze differences between online courses in disciplinary quadrants (hard-pure, hard-applied, soft-pure, soft-applied)…

In 2005 the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) was successful in obtaining a grant from National Centre of Science, Information and Communication Technology and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia (SiMERR) to undertake the Computing Studies Teachers Network Rural and Regional Focus Project. The project had five…

Developing standards for e-learning will have important implications for instructional designers. The most obvious change is that designers will not be designing courses any more; they will be designing small, stand-alone units of instruction called learning objects. This will create a learning object economy that will bring new challenges as well…

In an excerpt from "The Wired Tower," a college president offers his perspective on the revolutionary and evolutionary changes that higher education will experience as a result of information technology and warns against a rush into the digital economy that could destroy higher education's reason for being. (EV)

Describes the use of learning cells to facilitate Socratic-like discussion and discusses how they can be adapted to the Internet. (EV)

This concluding chapter offers thoughts about educational philosophy and how higher education might view technology as it moves between the seemingly paradoxical ideas of making the academic experience more user-friendly and making distance education available to the masses. (EV)

Describes the trends in higher education predicted and discussed at a staff retreat of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). Trends include an evolving role for business officers, increasing enrollment, competition, and e-learning. (EV)

Examines the current status of electronic learning/ distance education in colleges and universities and finds a tension between richness (the overall quality of information) and reach (the number of people involved). Suggests that to date institutions have focused their e-learning ventures on reach instead of richness. Urges schools to use…