This resourceful book provides cutting-edge exploration and insightful analysis of educational implications of technology and distance higher education in Africa and Asia, critically examining access, curriculum, pedagogy, externally designed programs, the quest for ownership and strategies for creating a knowledge society.

Open and distance learning has been used in many ways in the recent past to provide both primary education and adult education. The Commonwealth of Learning works with governments, schools and universities with the aim of strengthening the capacities of Commonwealth member countries in developing human resources required for their economic and social development. Many existing policy documents link distance education with new information and communication technologies, portraying them as a promising universal access and exponential growth of learning. This book answers the key questions to these issues and assesses the impact and effect of the experience of basic education at a distance all over the world and in a wide variety of forms. This is the first major overview of this topic for twenty years.

Distance education includes the use of correspondence courses, the work of open universities, and education in-school and out-of-school based on broadcasting by radio or television. It is defined as an educational process in which a significant proportion of the teaching is conducted by someone removed in space and/or time from the learner. Within Africa, it has been used for teacher training, and for primary, secondary and tertiary education. Many African countries have been offering in-service training to teachers using correspondence courses. In primary education, the most important application of distance-teaching techniques has been in interactive radio, where radio is used for direct classroom teaching. At both secondary and tertiary level, "equivalence" courses have been developed offering an alternative route to formal qualifications for students outside school or college. Cost data are presented on all these applications, showing a reduction in costs at all levels. It is argued that distance education's potential to increase access to education and reduce costs justifies further investment along with other strategies for education in Africa.

This book, written by authors representing 12 countries and five continents, is a collection of international perspectives on distance learning and distance learning implementations in higher education. The perspectives are presented in the form of practical case studies of distance learning implementations, research studies on teaching and learning in distance learning environments, and conceptual and theoretical frameworks for designing and developing distance learning tools, courses and programs. The book will appeal to distance learning practitioners, researchers, and higher education administrators. To address the different needs and interests of audience members, the book is organized into five sections: Distance Education Management, Distance Education and Teacher Development, Distance Learning Pedagogy, Distance Learning Students, and Distance Learning Educational Tools.

"Open and Distance Learning in the Developing World sets the expansion of distance education in the context of general educational change and reviews its use for basic and non-formal education, schooling, teacher training and higher education."--BOOK JACKET. "Hilary Perraton provides a balanced evaluation of the legitimacy, advantages and disadvantages of distance education as a way of teaching and learning."--BOOK JACKET.

Distance education, combining the use of correspondence texts, broadcasting and limited opportunities for face-to-face study, has been used in at least a hundred teacher training programmes over the last 25 years. Distance Education for Teacher Training is the first comparative review of the use of distance education and open learning for the training and upgrading of teachers. The book contains case studies using a broadly common format both to describe and analyse distance teacher training programmes in eleven countries across five continents. The case studies describe the methods used to examine how far the craft of teaching can be studied at a distance. Using a standardised microeconomic framework, they provide unique data on the comparative costs of training teachers by distance and conventional methods. The authors then draw general conclusions about the advantages and drawbacks of using distance education or open learning, about the conditions for success, and about comparative effects and costs. Distance Education for Teacher Training will be of value to all concerned with teacher education, whether in developing or industrialised countries, and to those working in and planning for distance education and open learning.