The rapidly changing twenty-first-century educational environment is full of daunting challenges. Education is becoming ever more difficult as schools need to prepare their students for newly emerging challenges, new technologies and unpredictable problems. Many countries are seeking to establish effective learning cultures as a priority. However,…

This case study relates to distance learning students on open access courses. It demonstrates the use of predictive analytics to generate a model of the probabilities of success and retention at different points, or milestones, in a student journey. A core set of explanatory variables has been established and their varying relative importance at…

Over the recent years, there has been a growing interest in Open Educational Resources (OER). A similar trend was observed about a decade ago in the concept of Learning Objects, which inevitably faded without really making an impact in real-world educational contexts. A number of repositories were created that contain thousands of learning…

Technologically enhanced learning environments raise complex challenges for their designers, developers and users. Design patterns and pattern languages have recently emerged as a potential framework for addressing some of these challenges. However, the uptake of design patterns has been slow outside of the computer science community. We argue…

This document applies an anthropological framework to the explanation of group relations in an attempt to implement a community school. In a West Philadelphia area, black community groups joined to establish an alternative school, but tensions and conflicts developed over pedagogical practices. According to the anthropological framework, decisions…

This book examines flexible delivery of vocational education and training in Australia's technical and further education (TAFE) sector. Discussed in chapter 1 are issues in the invention and implementation of flexible delivery with general reference to Victoria's TAFE sector, vocational education and training, and selected precursors of flexible…

A study was conducted to develop practical options that could help shape an Australian national staff development strategy for vocational education and training (VET) staff engaged in flexible delivery. Data were gathered from the following: analysis of the literature, evaluation of 15 case studies in two Australian states and one territory that…

Ideological arguments are made for open learning, economic ones for distance education. If it can produce similar results to those of conventional education at a lower cost, then distance education has a powerful appeal. With increasing demand for access to educational opportunities at all levels, and often decreasing budgets in real terms for…

For the thirtieth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the National AECT Convention in Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…