Distance education technologies: The fourth generation

Abstract

For many years distance education practitioners have enthusiastically embraced a wide range of educational technologies. In contrast, on-campus educators have tended to be satisfied with traditional approaches ignoring the new technologies of teaching and concentrating their energies on research and other scholarly activities. A review of developments in the application of a range of technologies in distance education provides an appropriate foundation for delineating the challenge to leaders and managers of conventional on-campus institutions interested in improving the quality of teaching and learning. The opportunity for institutional leaders is to adopt a proactive stance and to generate an organisational development strategy which will lead to the new technologies becoming a structurally integrated element of the teaching/learning environment.