Distance education is fast developing a role world-wide and there is now a better understanding of what works and what doesn't. Effective teaching materials are critical to success and much teaching still depends on print. How can distance-education programmes ensure that teaching materials are of the highest quality and are produced on time? The answer lies partly in training, partly in developing sound management structures. A report by the International Research Foundation for Open Learning focuses on two complementary strands of research: how to train the writers of distance-learning materials and how to reward them.

The research focused on fifteen colleges and universities from developing countries and five from industrialised countries. The findings were drawn from a survey of institutions, case studies, literature on training and staff development, and discussions with professionals who train writers of distance-learning materials. The research distinguishes between dual-mode universities, which teach students both on- and off-campus, and open universities and colleges dedicated solely to teaching off-campus students. It offers practical and detailed guidance, aimed particularly at institutions in the south.

Research findings included the following.

• Distance learning can represent a challenge to the established educational culture leading to understandable resistance from staff members.
• Quality is heavily dependent on editorial work. Editors, whose role has no direct parallel in conventional teaching, play a major role in developing effective materials. The costs of editing are likely to be as great as the costs of writing materials.
• Many institutions, and especially dual-mode institutions, report difficulties in getting materials delivered by authors on time and of the necessary quality.
• The training of staff on distance education has tended to be ad hoc rather than part of a continuing programme.

Policy implications include suggestions that:

• Achieving high-quality off-campus teaching demands an unequivocal acceptance that it, and its students, should not be regarded as second-rate
• Authors need broad-based programmes of staff development, appropriate to their institutional and socio-cultural contexts, which will gradually raise capacity within their institutions
• Where a department accepts responsibility for materials development by its own staff, regular departmental processes can be engaged to share the work and encourage timely delivery
• Information technology provides opportunities to make life easier for writers and editors, through software such as wordprocessing packages. The development of materials in more sophisticated media is likely to increase costs.
• In resolving issues of intellectual property it is useful to distinguish between protecting an academic writer's reputation and ensuring the writer is properly rewarded.

Source(s):
'Distance Education Practice: Training and Rewarding Authors', Education Research Serial #33, Education Division, UK Department for International Development by H. Perraton and C. Creed (1999)

Funded by: DFID Education

id21 Research Highlight: 27 April 2000

Further Information:
Hilary Perraton
International Research Foundation for Open Learning
12 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 1PF
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1223 364721
Fax: +44 (0)1223 355207
Contact the contributor: H.D.Perraton@open.ac.uk

International Research Foundation for Open Learning

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