Australia - Commentary

Distance education in Australia around the turn of the 20th century was a distinctly different mode of learning and teaching. And as Colin Latchem points out in his contribution to this volume, it was intended for a distinctly different group of learners who lived very far away from large urban centers and removed from where the bulk of the educational institutions were located. It was an alternative solution to educational opportunity, and as such its learning and teaching methods were different from what was conventional practice in face-to-face campus-based educational contexts at the time, appropriately devoid of the thrills and frills of the campus-based educational experience. This alternative solution to learning and teaching had several remarkable attributes which have, over the years, gradually found their way into campus-based educational practice. Foremost among these attributes is the very public nature of the operation. In this mode, unlike what usually occurs within the four walls of a classroom, all communication between the teachers and the learners is out in the open. And because of this exposure, the distance education course material is subjected to higher standards in terms of the design of the instructional transaction it embodies