Popped into my old office at Monash yesterday and there, in brown cardboard wrapper, was a very welcome surprise: my copy of the International Handbook of Distance Education! Over three years in the making, and the product of countless hours by dozens of authors (60, in fact) from twelve countries, it has finally emerged, Continue reading
Tag Archives: distance education
The importance of voice
Audio lectures in general … are a sensation for off-campus students … it is extremely important for the 6000 odd off campus students as generally we never even hear our lecturers speak – let alone chat to them or hear their lectures.
These words were written by a distance education student in response to reading a draft of the Educational Technology Framework developed at Monash University last year. To be honest, this surprised me just a little, as the lecture recordings to which he referred were Continue reading
Are you too on YouTube?
Are you on YouTube? No … are you sure? Have you checked? I must admit I was surprised when my son informed me that there was a clip of me (all 20 seconds worth!), clearly recorded (unbeknown to me) on a mobile phone. It was from a talk I gave in Hong Kong last year, and I won’t give you the link as it’s not worth pursuing, but I must admit that I was surprised that it had been viewed by 202 people! Continue reading
A vision of distance students today
Late last year a video appeared on YouTube that rapidly became a smash hit (nearly 1.5 million hits, and nearly 7,000 comments) and created much discussion and debate.
Titled ‘A vision of students today’, it shows a lecture hall … Continue reading
A new year – looking backwards
Question: What was the first article in the first issue of Distance Education?
I thought I knew, but I’ve just discovered that I’ve been living under an illusion. As president of ODLAA, I should know something (a lot?!) about its history, especially its prestigious journal. So it came to me as something of a shock when I inadvertently discovered, when perusing online contents lists, that the first article in the first issue (1980) was NOT Des Keegan’s ‘On defining distance education’ as I had incorrectly believed for years, but Continue reading