Issues in Distance Education. Resource Paper.

Overview & Synopsis

The role of education in development is discussed in this paper as one of a number of issues in education in developing countries, including recent changes in population and technology that render traditional methods of imparting instruction inadequate. The concept of distance education is presented with reference to specific applications in Asia and the Pacific, and involvement of the World Bank and of the Asian Development Bank in distance education are briefly described. Areas recommended for consideration by participants in the regional seminar on distance education at which this paper was presented are summarized as follows: (1) the future role of distance education in human resource development; (2) strategies for implementing this role in relation to overall socioeconomic goals of countries; (3) new models involving modern communication technologies for ensuring the success of strategies suggested; (4) strategies for ensuring quality of distance education programs while enlarging their scope to cover the disadvantaged groups of society; (5) appropriate methods of ensuring academic status to distance education while retaining its flexibility and relevance to techno-economic realities; (6) internal efficiency and external relevance of distance education; and (7) international cooperation and assistance in promoting distance education. (MES)