Open and Distance Learning in Continuing Education

Teaching and learning by correspondence is the origin of what is today called distance education. Correspondence education has been known for several generations, mainly as part of adult education. References to what was probably correspondence education occur as early as the 1720s and to what was indisputably correspondence education in the 1830s’-~-B Correspondence education is taken to denote teaching in writing, by means of so-called self-instructional texts, combined with communication in writing, i. e., correspondence between students and tutors. There are thus two constituent elements of correspondence education, the teaching exposition and the non- contiguous communication, for both of which a supporting organization is responsible. ’ 4 As, for both of these elements, media other than the written word became common and grew in importance, the term correspondence education was felt by many to be too narrow. In North America, independent study ~ and home study6 have been used as competing terms. The same applies to external study in Australia and New Zealand, hence the name of the Australian and South Pacific External Studies Association. Since the early 1970s, distance education is the designation that has gradually been adopted in the United Kingdom (though resisted by the Association of British Correspondence Colleges), in North