Collaboration in Distance Education: International Case Studies(Routledge Studies in Distance Education)

As inter-institutional collaboration has become a key policy issue in distance and higher education, strategic alliances for course development, teaching and credit transfer have become a central feature of institutional culture and policy-making. Distance educators are leading higher education around the world in overcoming the many problems involved in collaboration to forge exciting new institutional links with significant benefits for students and institutions. Through Canadian, Australian, American and Malaysian case studies, this ground-breaking book identifies and analyses the key factors enhancing and inhibiting collaboration. The high incidence of failed collaborative ventures indicates that the dynamics and strategies for success are poorly understood. This book seeks to redress that lack of understanding, and to assist in future policy-making, in distance education and throughout the higher education field. The authors conclude that a culture of `collaborative individualism' is emerging which is playing a significant part in the profound changes occurring in the nature and practice of higher education. The authors are internationally well-known and highly regarded distance educators, with first-hand knowledge of the difficulties and benefits of collaborative ventures.

Table of Contents:
List of Contributors, Foreword by Anastasios Christodoulou, Preface, List of abbreviations, 1 Collaboration in distance education: an introduction, 2 Institutional cultures and their impact: ‘laddered’ studies in health sciences in British Columbia, 3 Constructing a Master of Distance Education programme: an Australian collaboration in programme development and teaching, 4 Creating self-learning materials for of f-campus studies: a Malaysian-Australian-Canadian training project, 5 The way of the future? Transfer credit and credit banking, 6 The Toowoomba Accord: a blueprint for collaborative external studies, 7 The rise and fall of a consortium: the story of the University of Mid-America, 8 The Contact North project: collaborative project management in Ontario, 9 Policies and trends in inter-institutional collaboration, References, Index

Review :
`Technology for learning, supported by tutoring and counselling, those are the themes of the book. Covering five continents, it all makes good reading, ...' - Times Educational Supplement