Student persistence in distance education: a cross-cultural multi-institutional perspective

Following the Twelfth World Conference of ICDE (Vancouver, 1982), the author was invited to coordinate a project aimed at operationalizing a research methodology that was discussed during the conference. The essence of the proposed methodology was to conduct essentially the same empirical study in a variety of distance education settings. It was thought that such an approach could engender an objective synthesis of research results that might lead to a significant contribution being made to the empirical basis for distance education.