ABSTRACT
This book has explored the many ways in which the Internet, Web and other new ICTs are helping to deliver a proliferating range of distance education courses and distributed learning activities in universities, corporate training, life-long learning and other educational arenas. As described and analyzed by contributors to this collection, individual faculty, departments, schools, university administrations and public agencies have launched a variety of ICT initiatives in distance education and distributed learning. In many cases, these have taken forward decades of experience in complementing and extending learning opportunities within the classroom and in remote locations. For example, the University of Southern California (USC) launched an educational radio program, entitled ‘University of the Air’, in 1934; moved to the production and distribution of educational television in
This final chapter concludes the book with a more prescriptive stance on key governance issues. It seeks to identify a set of guidelines that might increase the likelihood of a digital academe enhancing, rather than undermining, institutions of higher education and learning. The major lesson of this volume has been that there are many paths to online education and none of these is a sure win for access to high quality education. Educators are at the very early stages of charting the routes to a digital academe that achieve the opportunities – and avoid the pitfalls – identified by the many contributions to this book. These guidelines might help steer educators on the right course for their institution.
