ABSTRACT
It is sometimes said that there is nothing new about the concept of distance education, since it is possible to point to examples of the use of written material for educational purposes almost back to the beginning of written records and a clearly didactic objective is inherent in, for example, the Epistles of St. Paul. However, it is only in the twentieth century, and perhaps particularly in the last decade, that teaching at a distance has achieved international recognition and even acclaim. Consequently some have seen teaching at a distance as an industrialized form of teaching arising out of the new techniques which have been perfected in the twentieth century; 1 others, while not denying the importance of the new technologies, have seen in the recent rapid growth of this form of teaching a reflection of the increased and increasing costs of conventional teaching which is very labour intensive and to which distance teaching offers, therefore, a seductive alternative.
