Distance Education and Technology: Issues and Practice

The first section deals with issues that face practitioners of open and distance learning in the 21stcentury setting. It covers topics as diverse as the digital divide as a development issue the comparison of the environmental impacts of face-to-face and distance education, and the challenges of partnerships in this brave new world of transnational distance education. The papers in the second section focus predominantly on various forms of e-learning: “online,” “e-,” or “m-.” There is a range of issues and practices discussed, from a training programme for online tutors, to social presence, to development of identity online. The third section is the shortest, comprising six papers that, for the most part, describe new tools or learning environments to support learners or instructors in the online environment.