Prospects for Distance Education

This article explores trends in the strategy of using distance education to enhance "higher" learning, with a focus on collaborative initiatives being developed in Pakistan. As author Syed Mohammad Ali notes, this strategy was developed in England during the late 1960s, and has since become popular in several countries, including China and India. For more than 30 years, Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) in Pakistan has offered distance education opportunities for what has grown, over time, to "a significant number" of students.

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) rather than face-to-face interaction to educate makes sense in a country like Pakistan, where less than 5% of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled in a college or university. That is, distance learning could be an important option for those who might not otherwise be able to travel to major cities for in-person coursework, including young people in rural areas, those without adequate resources, or girls from conservative families. Globally, the United Nations "considers the medium an important tool for achieving its Millennium Development Goals", even if indirectly. For instance, within the education sector itself, the author notes that there is potential to increase literacy, improve standards of elementary and secondary education, and train or retrain teachers using a combination of distance education and information technology (IT) techniques.

In recognition of this potential, Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology set up the Virtual University (VU) in 2001, which trains computer professionals and offers courses in other professional studies, as well as in science and humanities subjects. VU hires teachers to deliver lectures that are aired on its television channels. In addition, students can listen to the lectures at over 100 private sector computer institutes located in 67 districts, where they can also use the internet to interact with tutors.

The author provides various examples of fresh partnerships being developed to capitalise on this system in Pakistan, and beyond. For instance, VU and AIOU are working to establish a mutually beneficial relationship. Furthermore, the Pakistan Education and Research Network is being formed to link up universities, providing a platform for collaborative research and allowing them to share academic content. In addition, the PANdora project, administered jointly by VU in Pakistan and Universitas Terbuka in Indonesia, involves researchers from 11 countries collaborating to make distance education more effective. They are exploring the use of short message systems (SMS) to handle student registration, evaluating various kinds of distance learning software, and trying to make e-assessment of students' work more rigourous. VU is also considering how to enhance and improve its courses by drawing on free courses and supporting material on the internet provided by the United-States-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).