As distance education extends its reach
and uses new delivery tools, concerns about
its effectiveness will only increase. Distance
education programs still lack credibility in
many countries, and students taking such
courses often experience difficulty in
obtaining recognition for their work. Even
the highly esteemed U.K. Open University
had difficulty in providing unequivocal evidence
of the quality of its programs until
these were actually compared with courses
offered by conventional higher education
institutions in the United Kingdom: programs
in 6 of the Open University’s 11 subject
areas were awarded “excellent” ratings.
Does distance education really work? Is it
just as effective as conventional education?
The answer to both questions is yes