This conceptual paper sets out the community-of-inquiry framework from a distributed perspective. It proposes that considering teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence from a distributed perspective allows the broadening of the presences to consider the way in which participants, content and tools maintain and advance these…

First-year university students exhibit considerably different levels of proficiency, often lacking the necessary prerequisites to attend certain courses. This is especially true for mathematics courses. While motivation alone plays a role, by far the most significant challenge consists in harmonising the different (and often incompatible)…

As India marches rapidly towards an ambitious agenda of economic and social advancement, one of the greatest challenges it faces is to provide extensive access to quality higher education opportunities. An evident and expanding Open Education Resources movement offers great promise for meeting this challenge through initiatives that make quality…

Universities are increasingly using advanced video-conferencing environments to interact for teaching and research purposes at a distance and in situations that combine distant participants with those face-to-face. Those who use these technologies expect professional development support to do so but we do not yet have a comprehensive research…

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) was conceived by ministers at their triennial Conference of Commonwealth Ministers of Education in 2000. The Commonwealth of Learning was asked to investigate possible models, and presented a proposal to ministers at their next conference in 2003. The concept of a virtual…

In this case study the delivery of business courses as a result of the partnership between the African Virtual University (AVU) and Curtin University in Western Australia is described. From 2004 to 2008, degree and diploma business courses were delivered using WebCT in the four AVU partner locations: Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), Kigali…

This paper reports on a survey of 358 respondents across 25 African countries into their usage of learning management systems. It concludes that while there are some enthusiastic advocates of such systems, the reality is that most African educators as yet have little knowledge about, or interest in, their usage. There remain very considerable…

Open licences are critical for defining Open Educational Resources. The goal of this article is to explain the logic of open licensing to teachers, funders, and educational policy-makers--to explain the relatively simple but vital considerations that are necessary to build this global educational commons of free learning material. In particular,…

This paper provides insights on the adoption or use of OpenCourseWare (OCW) to support broader research, training and institutional capacity development goals, based on the experience of the United Nations University. Specifically, it explains the strategic context for the use of OCW in the university through its related efforts in the area of…

Open education resources (OER) are taking centre-stage in many higher educational institutions globally, driven by the need to raise institutional profiles, improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning and achieve universal access to education. Many academics attracted to the idea of turning teaching materials into OER have, however, found…

This case study involved 429 distance education diploma students at the University of Botswana. The aim of the study was to find out whether these students had access to MP3 players and other technologies essential in distance learning. Findings show that, contrary to expectations, learners did not have access to MP3 digital audio devices.…

In the rush to promote the use of computer-mediated technologies for both traditional and distance learning, relatively little research has been conducted about learner feelings of isolation, alienation and frustration. More recent technologies such as web-logs (blogs) may provide a wider range of tools for bridging learners' feelings of…

The need for public health knowledge is ever increasing, but the educational options have been limited to coursework delivered by academics to individuals who can afford the cost of tuition at public health institutions. To overcome this disparity, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) has joined the Massachusetts Institute of…

In this paper we present a history of the idea of Open Educational Resources, overview the current state of the Open Educational Resources movement, report on critical issues facing the field in the immediate future, and present two new projects to watch in 2009.

Over the period 2006-2008, the Dutch Open Universiteit Nederland conducted an experiment in which Open Educational Resources (OER) were offered in an effort to bridge the gap between informal and formal learning and to establish a new style of entry portal to higher education with no barriers at all. OpenER received considerable attention both in…