GLOBAL: Q&A with on-line pioneer John Daniel

Sir John Daniel has been at the leading edge of the open and distance learning (ODL) movement through his roles as Vice-chancellor of the UK's Open University, Assistant Director General of UNESCO and, currently, President of the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, Canada, an organisation that has set the standard for ODL in developing countries. Among the many projects it supports is Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, TESSA, whose open educational materials were used by 300,000 African teachers last year.

Recently, University World News' David Jobbins interviewed Sir John, author of numerous publications including the recent book Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers: Achieving Education for All. The Q&A touched on a wide range of topics, assessing the ODL sectors' strengths and weaknesses, and the prospects for its future, an appropriate task for a pioneer of the technological revolution in ODL.

UWN: When you joined the UK's Open University as Vice-chancellor in 1990, the digital revolution was some years away. When did the potential of the new technology to deliver quality distance education become apparent and how did you develop it at the OU?

Sir John: It was in 1995. I spent the Christmas break writing a paper asking the OU council to invest £10 million in a project that I called INSTILL, Integrating New Systems and Technologies into Lifelong Learning. The deans and academics thought that this was rather a lot to invest in technology whereas the council wondered whether it was too little, so it seems I called it about right!

UWN: Were you surprised by the speed at which the new technologies were adopted?

Sir John: It was very interesting. In 1992 the OU Student Association was pretty hostile to the Home Computing Policy, taking the egalitarian view that "if everyone can't have it no-one should have it." They said we were moving too fast to require people to have computers. Two years later they were criticising us for moving too slowly.

UWN: Can we now assume that distance and on-line education are the same thing?

Sir John: Not at all. The vast majority of distance learners around the world still spend most of their time on print. Pure online education has been a bit of a disappointment. Students like a variety of media and those who spend their working days at computer screens want something different in the evening. Of course online does facilitate materials distribution - although it loads additional costs on to the students - and it does help interaction with tutors and students.

UWN: To what extent were agencies such as UNESCO and OECD able to regulate the development of cross-border higher education (CBHE) to ensure that it met the needs of communities at different stages of economic, social and technological development?

Sir John: The jury is still out. These agencies don't regulate anything, but the UNESCO-OECD guidelines on cross-border higher education have inspired some national legislation and regulation. However, there is still considerable - some would say rising - hostility to CBHE and open and distance learning generally, although in some cases, such as last week's ban on ODL in Ethiopia, there may be more to the move than meets the eye.

UWN: Could you outline what you understand is the thinking behind the Ethiopian ban? What are its implications for other states in the region?

Sir John: It may just be a fight-back from conservative institutions or it may be something more insidious, recalling many years ago when the Iranian regime banned the Free University of Iran - an open university - only to open it again as Payame Noor University because the needs were so great. ODL is harder to control than classroom teaching and tends to encourage independent thought.

UWN: Is the hostility to which you have referred part of the hardening of cultural divisions that may slow the opening up of the world to shared knowledge and scholarship? Is there a threat to ODL in the shape of, for example, militant Islam, or greater parochialism and cultural insensitivity in the US?

Sir John: There are many forces at work. Partly it is the old empire fighting back. But I think it is bolting the stable door after the horse has gone. All universities are so involved in bits of ODL that they will have great difficulty unscrambling it.

UWN: Has online learning been successful in delivering a quality educational experience for those students who have chosen it?

Sir John: Comparative studies show no significant difference between online and classroom, with boring regularity. Pure online is fine for training for, say, bank tellers, but it cannot yet be called the map to the buried treasure for university study - partly because we are still learning how to do it well.

UWN: Is there evidence that students who would otherwise have left their countries of residence to undertake higher education in another country are choosing distance learning as an alternative?

Sir John: Having spent four years studying at the University of Paris I would be the last to discourage people from studying abroad. If people want to study by ODL to save money or combine it with work then CBHE is a good alternative if there is no local ODL. I think it is particularly good for older, part-time students such as those studying with the UK Open University overseas. It gives them high-quality programmes with some different cultural spice.

UWN: You have said that no nation has made a bigger commitment to the use of the technology of open and distance learning in education than India, with not only the Indira Gandhi National Open University but also a dozen state open universities.

Sir John: I fear that IGNOU is losing the plot and letting quality slip - which is not difficult if you have more than one million students. But Indian colleagues think that IGNOU's loss of reputation is temporary. Of course, it's easy to lose the culture of quality customer service when you are swamped by demand.

UWN: You have said it is possible to take learning to scale with high quality, but that the challenge is to achieve quality at scale consistently in the most cost-effective manner. Could you enlarge on that?

Sir John: ODL is as much about good logistics and good student support as about good course materials. But sustaining good logistics and support means that management must constantly work at instilling a quality culture from top to bottom. Once they relax, things will slide. It is to the credit of institutions like the UK Open University and Athabasca that they have never relaxed their vigilance in this regard.

UWN: We have seen for-profit on-line providers of on-line distance learning such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan achieve commercial success and maturity. Has their intervention in the development of online education been welcome, or have they been able to cream off the lucrative developed world business, leaving the state and not-for-profit providers to deal with the bigger challenges in the developing world?

Sir John: Phoenix made a good start and I was defending it 10 years ago when conventional universities were hostile. We must also remember that ODL was commercial, such as Pitman correspondence courses, before it was public. The problem with the US for-profits is that they have been corrupted by massive public subsidies that they spend millions lobbying to retain. It is also the case that US for-profits actually deal with a lower socio-economic stratum, and give them a better lift into employment, than the public institutions.

UWN: Do you think you have convinced your early critics that on-line higher education fulfils its function as a rigorous educational experience as well as a source of standardised knowledge?

Sir John: No, but this is not a field where reason and evidence hold much sway. It was the direct experience of students and of academics from other institutions acting as tutors that gave the UK Open University its reputation for rigour and intellectual excitement.

UWN: To what extent has the growth of on-line distance learning been driven by the development agenda, and do you think that will continue when governments in the North are facing unprecedented fiscal challenges?

Sir John: Austerity will lead institutions in rich countries to take ODL more seriously and to plan it better. I find the UK a very interesting laboratory at the moment, with one minister suggesting a return to the University of London examination-only system.

UWN: In this new age of austerity, can fiscally-challenged governments look to ODL to provide a cost-effective alternative to traditional higher education?

Sir John: The short answer is 'no'. People are often misled by the cost-effectiveness of large-scale operations such as the UK Open University.

UWN: One of the Commonwealth of Learning's most notable achievements is the creation of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). Are you satisfied with the speed with which this project has developed? Are Commonwealth education ministers, who meet only every three years or so, best placed to drive such a project?

Sir John: It is their project. It was conceived by them at the 2000 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Halifax. So it is right that the ministers should drive it. Indeed, getting the countries to take over the management of the project, with COL in a supportive capacity, is something of which I am proud.

Development takes a long time, and since this project is aimed at strengthening existing tertiary institutions in the small states, rather than creating a new one, I believe that slow and steady wins the race. The pool of people with sophisticated IT skills in the 32 states has grown by hundreds and the course materials - and the creation of little discipline-based communities of practice - have had many beneficial spin offs. The governments of the small states think this is one of the most useful things the Commonwealth - not just COL - has ever done.

UWN: You have said that the idea of a global intellectual commons is "tremendously attractive" and that e-learning can help to make it happen. What is necessary to bring about that vision?

Sir John: More projects like VUSSC and a spirit of bi-directional open educational resource (OER) trading between north and south. This is slowly happening, such as the use of OERs from Malawi and Ghana in the US.

UWN: Do you see the South-South dialogue overtaking the 'traditional' north-south matrix as on-line education develops?

Sir John: Yes, the India-Africa axis, for example, is becoming more and more powerful and COL now finds it easy to recruit really good online education consultants in the South - with the advantage that they are capable of doing useful things without super-duper 24/7 bandwidth.

UWN: What do you hope will emerge from the sixth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning?

Sir John: A younger and even more eager 'learning for development' community will be invigorated. COL only sponsors delegates who have not been sponsored for previous Pan-Commonwealth Forums, and the excitement of these people at their first major international gathering is palpable and their experience frequently transforms their work when they get home.