Foreign Perspectives

Distance learning has come along in leaps and bounds in recent years as more and more of it has moved online.

One interesting aspect of the online nature of present day distance learning is that once a course is developed, many aspects could be made available at no cost in that, aside from tutor involvement, it costs next to nothing to distribute an online course. As usual, the Open University is blazing the trail on this one by offering some of it’s courses via Open Learn.

You can’t, yet, get a university qualification from them via this route but then this is an experimental offering at the moment. What’s on offer are segments of courses that currently form part of various degree programmes that they offer so if you’re thinking of taking a course with them it’s worth having a look at Open Learn to see if part of that course is available.

Would anyone study, say, 20 hours if they weren’t going to get something tangible at the end of it? Well, a growing number of people are doing exactly that even though the scheme isn’t terribly widely publicised.