IIIIIIII1[11111111111 Distance Education I Distance Education and the Open University Gordon Davies Computing Department Faculty of Mathematics and Computing The Open University Milton Keynes MK7 6AA UK g.davies @open.ac.uk T his is a new column in the Bulletin and will be c o n c e r n e d with distance education, in all of its m a n y guises. D i s t a n c e education is currently e n j o y i n g quite a lot o f publicity, particularly in the U n i t e d States, so first let me try to establish what is meant by distance education. One definition is "Distance education is the offering o f educational programmes designed to facilitate a learning strategy which does not depend on the day-to-day contact teaching, but makes use of the potential o f students to study on their own. It p r o v i d e s interactive study material and decentralised learning facilities where students can seek academic and other forms of educational assistance when they need it." This is the form of distance education that is c o m m o n in Europe, Asia and Australia. I know that in the United States a different form of distance education is common, as defined by the US Congress Office for Technology Assessment, "linking of teacher and students in several geographic locations via technology that allows for interaction." This suggests a remote classroom model with a camera in one c l a s s r o o m and the teaching transmitted to the remote classrooms, thus allowing for synchronous communication. O f course, the definition also allows for communication by the internet. I think these two forms are the most prevalent but I ' m sure there will be hybrids of these two. In some cases the provider is an institution that is dedicated to Distance Education, such as the Open University where I work, in other cases the p r o v i d e r m a y offer distance education in addition to a full traditional campus based programme. These latter institutions are now c o m m o n l y referred to as dual m o d e institutions. I am currently the Head of the Department of Computing at the Open University in England. The Open University is a distance education university with about 200 academic staff and over 7,000 part-time staff. Most of our teaching material is paper based, but many of our courses now use electronic communication in some form, such as conferencing, and some use electronic assignments with on-screen marking. One of the most important components of our teaching is the support that our part-time staff give to students. These staff, who are often academic staff in other universities, are the contact point for the twenty or so students in their care. They advise them, mark their assignments and teach them in the face to face sessions that are offered in the local study centres. Several courses use multi-media as a significant component of the teaching and some have web sites for students on a particular course. But the main difference that the technology has made is that it allows students to interact with each other and with their tutors. While we use the technology wherever we can there is still a belief that for many students in many contexts, learning from paper is more effective than learning from a screen. From this you will gather that we are essentially an asynchronous distance education institution. We subscribe to the first definition of distance education. However, it would be incorrect to think o f us as only a distance education institution. Our credibility as a university depends also on our success as a research institution. We have research projects, research students and academic staff are expected to do research. The quality and quantity o f our research is assessed along with all the universities in the U n i t e d K i n g d o m and we are in the top third of U K universities for our research performance. It is important for any university offering distance education that they have a c a d e m i c credibility and it is particularly important for the Open University which offers only distance education programmes. In m y d e p a r t m e n t we h a v e twenty academic staff and we write and present distance education courses in Computing to about 9,000 undergraduate students and about 4,000 postgraduate students. You can find out more about us at . Computing is one of the most popular subjects in this university and our new introductory course called 'Computing: an object oriented approach' currently has about five thousand students taking it. It's a large course taking a student about twelve hours a w e e k o v e r 30 weeks to study an has been called (by my colleagues of course!) the largest objectoriented course in the world. Its credit rating is about twelve semester hours. You can read about this course which is innovative in its use of technology, its pedagogy and its academic content at . Note: This column is intended to be a forum for you to let the S I G C S E community know how you are using distance education to teach computing, whichever model you use. It can also be a column where you ask questions about distance education. In so doing I hope we will all benefit. Vol 30. No. 4 December 1998 27a ?:i :-~,'~:i~ S I G C S E Bulletin

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