ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, as representatives of our two institutions, we began to discuss collaboration between Deakin University and the (then) Open Learning Insititute of British Columbia. Our hope was to share existing course materials and co-operate in developing new sequences in our respective majors. Four years later, we had achieved agreement on one course, several meetings, an enjoyable friendship, and little else. Collaboration, even with personal commitment to make it work, was not easy. By the end of the 1980s, however, our local environments and the distance education scene in general had undergone a transformation. Interinstitutional collaborative ventures have proliferated, and, as several of the case studies in this collection show, have been highly successful. There are signs that, for political, educational, and financial reasons, collaboration is becoming a central feature of distance education at local, regional, and international levels. This book is a first step toward understanding the phenomenon.
