Distance Education Versus Classroom. Close Encounters to the Fourth Kind.

Large increases in population, combined with a growing awareness of the benefits of education and the increasing costs of conventional educational methods, are causing governments to explore alternative educational means to provide education on a large scale. Education and government planners in developing countries are attempting to provide equitable access to education, enrichment of the content of formal education to include more applied and employment-related courses, and an upgrading of skills and improvements in quality of life and human resources though continuing education. Distance education methods, utilizing communications technology, loosen the confines of traditional teaching requirements and allow larger sections of the population to benefit from education. This work is a compilation of country case studies on distance education presented at a four-month course entitled "Distance Education for Development--1991," held at the International Extension College & Department of International and Comparative Education, Institute of Education, University of London (England). The following papers are included: (1) "Colombia: University of Cartagena" (Carlos Ospina); (2) "Ghana A: Country Case Study" (Mercy Yaroh); (3) "Ghana B: The Ghana Institute of Linguistics" (Michael Awimbilla); (4) "India A: Indira Ghandi National Open University" (Dervish Gopal); (5) "India B: Technical Teacher Training Institutions" (B. G. Barki); (6) "Indonesia: The Open Junior Secondary School (STM Terbuka)" (Machdum Almunwar, Sunarti Arifin, Serfina R. Soedarmanto, and Djufri Thalip); (7) "Jamaica: UWIDITE, EBS, ISTET, JAMAL" (Cordella Lewis); (8) "The Maldives: Distance Education in the Maldives" (Mujthaba Hameed); (9) "Mauritius: Mauritius College of the Air" (Roshun Dhurbarrylall); (10) "Pakistan: Allama Iqbal Open University" (Muhammed Rashid, M. A. Zaidi, and Zahida Qazi); (11) "Sri Lanka: Open University of Sri Lanka" (Vinitha Wickramarante and Kule Kularante); (12) "Sudan: Sudan Open Learning Unit" (Adam Homidan Arbab); (13) "Tanzania: South African Extension Unit" (Margaret Kotta and Bernard Gololo); and (14) "Turkey: The Open Education Faculty" (Ugur Demiray and Marina McIsaac). (SWC)