ABSTRACT
Distance training may well be the ‘flavour of the month’ or have ‘gone to the top of the agenda’ (Daniel 1999) but it remains relatively unknown. Few understand the daily workings of an open university or a distance training college; the four institutional models identified in this study have not been presented before in the literature; the dayto-day constraints of teaching at a distance are still little understood:
• turn-around of assignments • certification at a distance • the shelf-life of courses • choice of technologies for the home-based student • cost-effective course production • choice of technologies that will remain with the same protocol for the shelflife of
courses • tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) and computer-marked assignments (CMAs) • the industrialisation of the education process.
