ABSTRACT
Realizing the potential of lifelong learning in rural and remote communities poses specific challenges. The first major challenge is to ensure access to learning opportunities. Access to learning for people living and working in rural and remote locations and unable to attend campus-based institutions is greatly enhanced through information and telecommunications technologies. This fact has been widely recognized by both learning institutions and rural and remote communities for many years. Building and maintaining a technological infrastructure is a foundational task; it provides a platform for the services and products that assist rural and remote people to become motivated, self-directed learners. In many ways building and maintaining an equitable infrastructure is an easy task compared with the challenge of using the technology effectively to
progress the objectives of lifelong learning. There are a number of barriers to the effective use of technology in rural and remote communities, including a deficiency of relevant programmes; limited opportunity to access technology and associated services; and the lack of experience and confidence of many potential learners. Services and programmes to overcome these barriers should be delivered within a context of supporting the educational, cultural and economic needs of communities so that learners can become active, independent, lifelong learners and communities can become learning communities using learning as a key strategy to promote social cohesion and economic development.
