Book Review: <i>Strategies for Sustainable Open and Distance Learning,</i> by Andrea Hope and Patrick Guiton (Eds.)

Strategies for Sustainable Open and Distance Learning, by Andrea Hope and Patrick Guiton (Eds.) (The Commonwealth of Learning, World Review of Distance Education and Open Learning. Vol. 6, Routledge, 2006, 188 pp. $40.95).It is interesting to note that in the past few months the open and distance learning (ODL) community has seen the publication of two realistic and challenging studies. In the first, Global Perspectives on E-Learning: Rhetoric and Reality, Alison A. Carr-Chellman and her contributors (2005) review and criticize the often touted view that Internet-based courses will automatically democratize education worldwide.The other, Strategies for Sustainable Open and Distance Learning places ODL in a wider time frame that spans the last three or four decades in an attempt to show the policies that have proved workable and the pitfalls to be avoided if sustainability is to be achieved. This review concentrates on that second publication.This book is volume 6 in a series inspired and directed by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), the highly respected research and development institute based in Vancouver that gathers specialists belonging to the major distance learning institutions in the Commonwealth countries—from the British Open University to UNISA in South Africa, and Indira Gandhi National Open University, as well as academics from Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, European, and American universities. Contributions from and about Africa are new and challenging, and South America makes a long overdue entry for the English-speaking public with the present volume. The book is aimed at the initiated: target readers for this series are certainly people who have been or are going to be fully involved in distance education and who wish to tap into existing critical expertise, away from the technology-oriented, overoptimistic prophecies of the late 1990s.From the very first pages, Sir John Daniel, long the British Open University vice chancellor and now COL’s president, sets the tone: sustainability as opposed to ad-hoc experimental programs is a fundamental goal that has to be achieved whatever the format adopted because ODL can involve very large numbers of people. Further, he says, “We do not experiment on live human beings” (p. 15)COL’s far-reaching network of partners and consultants made it possible to gather a highly diversified group for an intensive week-long “think tank” that led to the book. Many participants (including this reviewer) were in fact seasoned practitioners who had just retired or were about to do so after more than 20 years of active service in educational technology and distance education initiatives. The book’s editors thought the sum-total of experience gathered for the occasion would pretty much cover all the problems educators are likely to be confronted with when they wish to streamline the operation of a traditional distance university or to set up a viable ODL alternative within an existing, traditional, face-to-face academic institution. Hence arise the eight topic areas, each corresponding to a specific chapter in the book: from policy to implementation; planning for sustainability; managing change for sustainability; teaching, learning and student support; the management of systems in open and distance learning; strategic alliances—collaboration for sustainability; quality matters— strategies for ensuring sustainable quality in the implementation of odl; and, last but not least; counting the cost.The methodology adopted by the editors and the authors responsible for each chapter is based on a clearly stated, well grounded retrospective view of what makes distance education initiatives sustainable, followed by case studies that are critically analyzed in that light, in a clinical, nonpolemic way.“From Policy to Implementation” is the work of specialists like Arnaldo Nhavotto of Mozambique and U. Vyasulu Reddi of The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia. These educators have been entrusted with either the design of an ODL system built from scratch in a developing country to meet educational needs that are not being addressed because of insufficient existing school and university systems, or with the delicate task of giving some substance to a minister’s somewhat hazy vision of the benefits to be reaped from a novel form of delivery based on those exciting new technologies. Distance educators are not usually confronted with problems of such magnitude except when they are being recruited by their own governments or by international organizations. To the uninitiated, the chapter is both a lesson on how to steer a clear educational course amid the vested interests and resistance that spring up whenever technology-based pedagogical change is being suggested, as well as a useful tool for effective practical social diagnosis with a clearly itemized list of issues to be addressed. It also shows that a lot of thoughtful planning is taking place in countries outside Europe and North America that are not usually associated with innovations in distance education“Planning for Sustainability” describes a vision about the importance of knowing the actual human and institutional context. This is reinforced in the following chapter, which presents two colleges of distance education (in Botswana and Namibia) and dwells upon the importance of a “strategic and planned approach” to the implementation of ODL that forces teachers and administrators to “think ahead” instead of responding to the latest technology-led fashion. The authors explicitly refer to the systems approach that has been developed by COL, the so-called “virtuous circle”: analyse, design, develop, implement, evaluate, and revise. They consider the approach more as a retroactive tool to diagnose what went wrong rather than as a step-by-step set of operational instructions, although it should also be used from the initial planning stages.“Managing Change for Sustainability” addresses one of the major issues that has come up within traditional institutions of higher learning ever since the need for self-financing and the growing demands for lifelong learning together with the availability of Web-based platforms have made ODL an essential strategic option for universities. Of the three case studies presented, two (namely the teacher training programme of Ghana’s university of education and the reorganization of a bimodal university of South Australia around a flexible learning center) show that powerful top-down initiatives may survive against all odds. Inside traditional face-to-face universities, histories are quite different. The case presented here by Tony Bates is not an isolated example. In fact, the highly successful department of Distance Education and Technology at the University of British Columbia eventually disappeared under pressure from the entrenched academic authorities when, as Bates explains, “deans had little influence over distance-education activities and the growth of distance-learner enrolments did not result in increased revenues for the faculties” (p. 55). The emphasis here is on the need for sustained firmness and vision at the executive level in the face of two well-identified, unrelenting sources of opposition: administrators who mistakenly try to manage change along lines and criteria borrowed from organizations that have little in common with universities; the other, the faculty who are afraid to lose their hold on teaching and research activities that they believe to be their fundamental “raison d’être” and the source of their academic ”divine right.” The entrenched interests and lack of vision make it extremely difficult to manage change successfully inside distance education enterprises. This is compounded by the purchase of expensive technologies within the distance education unit that often raise tensions among departments in an era of limited financial resources for all.“Teaching, Learning and Student Support” offers a list of questions that should be answered at least partially before designing and implementing any distance education system or course offer within any context. These questions come out of case studies (Algeria, Bangladesh, and the Commonwealth Diploma in youth development at UNISA and Botswana) and ensuing analyses. These remind us that learning outcomes and skills acquisition constitute the never-to-be-forgotten objective, and that the overriding question is “How much effective student support can actually be provided in a given context to attain learning objectives?” This raises the issue of what human resources and technical facilities need to be available if an efficient, responsive tutoring service is to be created. Tutoring is the key element in student support; however, it tends to be overlooked by academics who are accustomed to evaluating course material. They are at a loss when asked to assess the quality of tutor support and interaction. The case studies raise a whole array of questions about the real nature of assessment, the choice of media, and so forth—formulated by Roger Mills, the chapter editor, or borrowed from other sources such as Rowntree. These questions constitute an excellent checklist for those who wish to weigh the pros and cons of an ODL option in a specific context.“The Management of Systems in Open and Distance Learning” presents widely different case studies and experiences that are primarily focused on:The common conclusion that can be derived from the cases analyzed in this chapter is that managers of educational systems tend to follow their own logic, and this may sometimes lead them to overlook the actual needs of tutors and students. They forget that learner centeredness is the key to a well-integrated operation; this holds true for all cultural and administrative contexts.“Strategic Alliances, Collaboration for Sustainability” is a major issue that has come to the front in many university departments under pressures from either students who wish to broaden their horizons or from international institutions like the European Commission or the World Bank that offer substantial funding to specific transnational distance degree programs based on the latest information technologies. This chapter is of special relevance at a time when universities across Europe are trying to respond to calls for transnational proposals like the Erasmus Mundus (www.ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/mundus) whose aims are similar to those of the Fulbright initiative some 40 or 50 years ago. The first examples deal with ODL-oriented alliances within the same multi-campus institution or among different institutions, the final aim being to maximize the use of design talents and offer a greater variety of course options. Some have failed, others have survived, and a few are thriving. However, the authors point out that histories of competition and technocratic ideologies often make distance education alliances within the same country highly problematic. Those obstacles generally do not exist in the cross-border alliances that are established in response to specific needs. Examples of such alliances are the online master of distance education set up by the University of Maryland and Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg or the master’s degree program in drug abuse control and prevention built in response to a call from the Organization of American States (OAS) by the National Distance University of Spain (UNED) together with 10 universities and specialized Institutes from the Americas.This is a very frank chapter in which the authors analyze what went wrong and what could have been done better without avoiding the underlying financial concerns of administrators and teaching staff alike. These persons expect to build new capacities through the ODL alliances and acquire the human and financial resources that are badly needed at the department and faculty levels. It also shows that dealing with those international organizations that call for ODL proposals is a healthy, challenging exercise for academics who need to “think outside the box.”“Quality and Transnational Education” is a challenging chapter that provides useful bases for discussions on what constitutes quality in distance education. One clear lesson is that the main reluctance to engage in-depth questioning—the strongest obstacles to genuine quality policies—is to be found among teaching staff who resent the process as demagogic. Through case studies and analyses, the emphasis is that the quality concern should apply first and foremost to students’ actual learning and acquisitions, not simply to such administrative criteria as student numbers, attrition rates, numbers of degrees awarded, and so forth. Quantitative criteria overshadow quality objectives and blur the picture for prospective students when they wish to choose a particular ODL provider and course of study. This is compounded by the fact that distance learning is the most globalized part of education with powerful promotion and recruitment campaigns by the newly installed local branches of foreign universities. The definition of quality becomes essential, and specific accreditation procedures have to be invented for the new institutions.Accreditation should then be based on “outcomes rather than process,” with output measured with relation to what students actually need and expect. The theme is taken up by Kathryn Chang Barker when she focuses the issue of quality in e-learning on the student, “the new breed of student” whose consuming habits are those of sophisticated “postindustrial” societies and who look forward to a reasonable, professionally applicable return on their personal investment in ODL. To this end, she has developed with her team a set of quality assurance mechanisms that can be administered to any e-learning program and lead to a valuable certification mark. The methodology is impeccable, but there is a long way to go before it is applied everywhere, thereby reducing the high drop-out rates that plague nearly all distance education courses of study.“Counting the Cost” asks how can quality be maintained or improved while keeping the costs within reasonable limits. Is the fund-seeking drive for increased student numbers compatible with the quality of learner support that is essential in distance learning?These questions are often raised and clarifications are badly needed at a time when universities expect to gain extra funding without increasing staff and design costs, by launching e-learning units. This drive, as the authors point out, has proved to be one of the major fallacies of the past five to ten years, since recent surveys have shown that the “cost per distance-learning student was often broadly similar to that of conventional students while off-campus study tended to have higher costs than on-campus study (JM Consulting Ltd, 2003, p. 157)The chapter contains a series of examples borrowed from the established management and accounting procedures followed by large-scale distance universities like the British Open University, Indira Gandhi National Open University, or from recently created programs that are widely different in scale and purpose, like the nationwide television school support network of Mexico, the online master’s degree program at Carl von Ossietsky University or the Open University of Catalunya (which incidentally was historically the first distance university to be created around Web-based services).In all cases, the distinctions made between capital and recurrent costs, start-up costs and running costs, costs and fees charged, will prove enlightening to those who see the need for initial “take-off” subsidies but are not used to writing sophisticated business plans in the increasingly complex field of educational enterprises. For the authors, matched funding, multiple partnerships with companies and foundations, as well as cross-subsidies within or between institutions are the keys to sustainability. This is because, for obvious sociopolitical reasons, government grants and student fees cannot and will not meet the evergrowing costs of an innovative service industry based on expensive new technologies with labor-intensive student support.This book is not a set of instructions for lay educators who wish to set up an ODL system from scratch. This is, rather, a useful tool for the building up of a proper methodology taking into account all the hurdles and successes analyzed in the eight chapters in a variety of geographic and cultural contexts never presented before. This may be somewhat baffling at times to readers who are not accustomed to the “international circuit.” On the other hand, although the five continents are represented, many will find it strange that the bibliographical references are almost exclusively in English.As it is, the book (and the other volumes in the COL series) should nevertheless be on the reading list of all training programs and brainstorming seminars for would-be administrators and specialists in the design and implementation of distance education. I would also add that a translation into languages other than English would certainly help avoid repeating some of the failures described in its dense 180 pages.

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