From Distance Education to Distributed Learning Surviving and Thriving

Higher education is currently undergoing what may be its most significant change since the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century. A number of socioeconomic forces, primarily globalization, have increased student mobility and created a need for increased and more flexible access to education. At the same time, the recent vast expansion of electronic communication capability has presented us with the means to provide the desired increased access, using various types of distributed learning. Having this tool at hand has, in turn, created a demand for new levels of administrative flexibility on the part of educational institutions while at the same time increasing budgetary pressures on them (Clarke 2002).