Alan Tait is the Director of International Development and Teacher Education at The Open University in United Kingdom. See his presentation at the #EDEN2015 Annual Conference here. His talk is captured on video and will be published on the EDEN Youtube channel. Read about EDEN: http://www.eden-online.org

1. From distance education to technology
enhanced learning: challenges for
ODEL Professional Associations
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 1
‘Alles Ständische und
stehende verdampft’
‘All that is solid melts
into air’

2. ICDE
• Founded 1938 by correspondence schools
• ‘providing the first forum in the world where
distance education institutions and
professionals could meet, learn from one
another and enter into partnerships’
• Mission 2014: ‘ICDE is the leading global
membership organisation for enhancing the
quality of open, distance, flexible and online
education including e-learning’
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 2

3. Field identifiers
• Flexible opportunity for adults
• Learning off campus at a distance
• Technologies for learning and teaching
• Access
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 3

4. From correspondence education to
distance education 1970-1980’s
• From private sector correspondence colleges
to open universities
• From ICCE to ICDE 1982
• Change of language
• Open universities new powerful actors,
pushing aside commercial correspondence
colleges
• New landscape
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 4

5. Dominance of Open Universities
• EADTU founded 1987
• Core members: Open Universities of Western
Europe, 1 per country
• Open Universities the paradigm of innovation
with technologies for learning
• Scale
• Access and quality
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 5

6. The distribution of innovation: Dual
mode institutions
• EDEN, founded in 1991
• ‘new Europe’, i.e. East, Central and West
• Dual mode and blended institutions
• All sectors, not just Higher Education
• Innovation seen as distributed
• Open Universities major players but not
monopolies in ODL
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 6

7. Neither distance nor campus, but TEL
• Association for Learning
Technology
• Founded 1993 in UK
• Conference; journal;
professional certification
• ‘Our purpose is to ensure that use
of learning technology is effective
and efficient, informed by
research and practice, and
grounded in an understanding of
the underlying technologies, their
capabilities and the situations
into which they are placed’
• Online Educa
• Founded 1995
• Education in all sectors;
employers; government
‘ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN is the
event for learning
professionals to discover
innovative solutions, absorb
new thinking and take action
by implementing changes in
the field of learning and
technology’
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 7

8. From Distance Learning to Open
Education
• Via Open Learning (major discussion in 1989/1990)
• ODL: Open and Distance Learning
• E-learning
• Web-based learning
• Online learning
• Mobile learning
• Flexible learning
• Distributed learning
Then move out of ODL institutions post 2000
• TEL: Technology enhanced learning
• OER’S, MOOCs, and Open Education
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 8

9. From distance education to open
education
• All campuses have learning management systems
• Learning resources available on campus through LMS
• Students on campus Email with lecturers
• Assignments submitted electronically
• MOOCs within modules
• Learning decentred from campus
• Edinburgh University and postgraduate students: aim
for postgraduate teaching parity of numbers of campus
and distance in 10 years
• c. 100 of 160 UK Universities offer some Masters
teaching online
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 9

10. MOOCs from 2008: who stole our
cheese?
• 2012 move out of pilot projects to major phenomenon
• Scale innovation from research based universities such
as MIT and Stanford
• Major MOOC platforms not from open universities
• E.g. expertise in University of East Anglia MOOC
• Painful for self-image of Open Universities:
-- ‘Access, pedagogy and completion are poor! ‘
– and
– ‘How dare ‘conventional universities’ lead in innovation in
TEL?’
– FutureLearn and European MOOC initiatives now reclaim
innovation
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 10

11. Prisoners of our identity in ODL?
• But do Open Universities
lead or follow with TEL?
• Campus institutions now
focus of innovation in TEL?
• Or does digital revolution
make divide old-fashioned?
• Has widespread ICT
changed landscape of
innovation in TEL?
• Language, power and
landscape have changed
• Do we risk being prisoners
of our identity in ODL?
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 11

12. Mobile learning
‘gradually even the term ‘mobile learning’ will
fall into disuse as it is increasingly associated
with learning in a more holistic rather than a
more specialized or peripheral sense’
UNESCO 2013, The future of mobile learning: implications for policy makers and
planners, p 71
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13. ICT now ‘normal’
• From divide of ‘ODL’ and
‘Conventional’ institutions
• Smart phones, tablets and wifi
• Decentering of learning from
place of study
• Disembedding: living local,
national and international lives
now the norm
• Searching and evaluating:
Learning society more possible
than ever
• Normalisation of digital media
and TEL
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 13

14. The landscape is changing
• Technology enhanced learning now
everywhere, on campus as well as in ODL
• Lead in TEL not necessarily now in open
universities
• Field identifiers of ODL not adequate
discriminator
• Professional associations based on ODL need
to rethink place in landscape of TEL
ICDE Executive Commitee 2014 14