ABSTRACT
As both researchers and teachers we are concerned with issues of student learning. Especially we are concerned with research and teaching in the adult ODE (open and distance education) sector, where the majority of students are ‘mature age’ and part time (Evans, 1994; Morgan, 1993). The university contexts in which we work, as is the case for many other colleagues in other educational institutions, have been influenced by the rhetoric and realities of new technologies. In the case of our work in universities, there is a concern for constructing what might be called the ‘new educational technologies’ in ways which encourage and sustain educational dialogues between teacher and students (Evans and Nation, 1993a; Morgan, 1997). Most of the new educational technologies are based on computer and communications equipment, and the technologies which surround them, in the world at large. The surge of computer and communications technologies is said to be ‘globalizing’ economic, social, and political relations, and drawing educational institutions and systems into the fray.
