This article is a descriptive overview of one aspect of the history of Quebec's Tele-universite (TU). This case is used to unveil the inter-organizational and political tensions which may accompany the somewhat difficult development of a distance education model. Teleuniversite was created in 1972 as an experimental project by the Universite du…

Hong Kong's economic fortunes have always depended on trade with China. By the mid-1980s, the colonial higher education system was catering to only 6% of the 18-20 age cohort and there was a backlog of adult learners who had been denied access. The Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong was launched in 1989 to overwhelming public response. It…

The history of distance education in Russia and in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is a history of dramatic change in ideology, conceptual framework, and approach. It can be divided into two main stages: initial formation and development into the world's largest system of correspondence learning, from the mid 1920s to the…

Research on distance education in Mexico is still in the embryonic stage, in spite of its long history. One indication is that among the lines of research defined by the Mexican Council on Educational Research, the leading organization in the field in Mexico, distance education does not even appear. Only recently, in the last few years, has an…

France is one of the most modern countries in the world and is a leading force in Europe. A highly literate and well-educated society, France's education statistics for 2003 show 12.1 million French children in primary and secondary education and 2.2 million students in tertiary education. The concept of education as a market commodity--long since…

Botswana is a landlocked semi-arid country sharing boundaries with Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Setswana and English are the official languages, with English being the most used as the language of government and business transactions. In comparison to most African countries, Botswana is culturally homogenous, and nearly 80% of the…

Australia's large distances and widely distributed population has meant that distance education has been an important part of its history. From the earliest provision of schooling by mail through a series of correspondence schools, both state and federal governments have provided a sound infrastructure to support distance education. Innovative…

High demands on learners in Web-based learning environments and constraints of the human cognitive system cause disorientation and cognitive overload. These problems could be inhibited if appropriate cognitive tools are provided to support learners' cognitive processes. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors influencing the use of…

Educational institutions across the country are adopting guidelines to help assure the quality of e-learning programs and courses. Corporations are also adopting guidelines, but their focus is on the interoperability and reusability of learning objects. While there are commonalities, there are also significant differences between how education and…

This article provides an overview of a 6-university collaborative project, "Roadmap to Effective Distance Education Instructional Design." This project developed instructional materials and innovative approaches to better prepare instructional designers at land-grant universities and other universities with agricultural academic programs to…

The Internet has become a major resource for teaching and learning. Educators are innovating methods and strategies to integrate Internet technology effectively into instruction to meet their various needs. Providing learning models and facilitations online for a graduate computer literacy class was a new innovation, and generated interesting…

Multivariate statistical analyses were used to determine if there were differences in sense of community and perceived learning between university students enrolled in fully online and fully face-to-face on-campus courses (N = 279). Study results provide evidence that online students feel a weaker sense of connectedness and belonging in both…

The purpose of this article is to investigate the construct of academic self-regulation in Web-based learning environments. Self-regulation will be discussed in general using social cognitive theory as the framework of the discussion. The article concludes with a brief review of the limited amount of research on self-regulation in Web-based…

The study explored the effectiveness of a discussion support taxonomy used in a course in which graduate students served as online discussion leaders. The students' ability to effectively use the taxonomy as a support tool to facilitate the discussions was examined. A content analysis of the discussion transcripts was conducted, and findings…

One of the most significant events that heralded the Department of Defense's commitment to distance education was the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, which held its kickoff meeting in Washington, DC in 1997. This meeting provided the army and other military services the endorsement that had been lacking relative to implementing…