 Hello, my name's Helen Lentl, I'm the Fellow in Distance Learning at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. I'm here in Vancouver with the Commonwealth of Learning where we're working on a video project about leadership and management in distance learning. I'm joined today by Alison Needritchison who has a vast experience in various roles in distance learning. Welcome Alison. Thanks Helen. Alison, you've had a diverse and varied career in distance learning. Can you briefly describe this for us? I moved into distance learning from a background in video production and corporate communication. I started at the University of Bath where I was manager for flexibility in learning in higher education, a higher education funding council research project. Then I was given the opportunity to work in Namibia in Africa as the technical advisor for the Namibian College of Open Learning and I did that for three years and I learned an enormous amount there. I stayed in Africa for 10 years working on a range of different projects for development partners such as European Union, DFID, African Development Bank, ILO and I worked in Zambia, Botswana, Rwanda, Namibia, South Africa and also the Solomon Islands. I've managed projects in teacher education in open schooling, in tertiary education, adult basic education and also more recently in technical and vocational education and then in 2009 I moved to COAL to be the education specialist for technical and vocational education. I currently manage projects in about 15 Commonwealth countries in technical and vocational education, distance education. Thanks Alison, very interesting. In what way is distance learning different to conventional face-to-face provision? There are many differences between distance education and conventional education. For me one of the most important is the difference in the teaching and learning process. With distance education learners need to take more responsibility for their learning and teachers need to let go a little bit and teachers, the teachers role is changed quite considerably. The teaching and learning happens through the materials which have to be produced way in advance of the actual process happening and so teachers have to put in, have to have this sort of systematic approach to developing the learning content so that the students have this interactive experience. So both teachers and students need capacity building, need training, need sensitizing to these new roles. Another difference is in the management processes. There are all kinds of organizational structures which are different with distance education and from an institutional point of view those need to be managed differently. For example team working. Conventional education tends to rely on an individual teacher who goes into a classroom, closes the door and what goes on in that classroom is the business of that teacher. Whereas with distance education a whole group of people, different people are involved in in the teaching and learning materials production and that process of team working has to be managed quite carefully. Can you expand a bit more on how these differences impact on the management and leadership of distance learning provision? Otto Peters talked about distance learning as the industrialized form of of education and what he meant by that was there's a whole new system involved you know we've got specialization, high division of labor, mechanization, automation and it's it's that that leads us into the need for a course team made famous by British Open University and and their approach to course team development. So the impact for managers is dealing with the way that their teachers and the support staff and the other professionals are involved in this teaching and learning process and for some institutions that's quite problematic because particularly government institutions who are starting you know going dual mode those kinds of roles don't exist in the government staff establishment so there is a need for changes at all sorts of levels so that you've got appropriate staff with appropriate skills different skills all working together to produce a high quality teaching and learning experience for the learners. There are other differences to do with the cost structure I think that most people don't realize that distance education has a different cost structure from conventional education with distance education you need a large injection of cash at the start of the process writers have to be paid materials have to be printed or produced distance learning and e-learning materials have to be developed and all of this has to be paid for and made ready in advance of any learners enrolling for a course and any fees being paid so governments need to recognize the need for solid financial models and and robust funding mechanisms to enable that that cash to be available in order for the system to work with conventional education the funding the highest cost element is staff salaries and that's more or less fixed on a monthly basis and governments know exactly how much that's going to be each month and with conventional education then the fees are paid upfront and and the cost structure is is more manageable so there has to be that recognition of this difference and unfortunately governments and institutions try to squeeze a new model of distance education into an old financial model of conventional education and it ends up with distance education programs being underfunded under resourced not having the right staff and of course it's extremely difficult to produce a quality following on from this Allison what are the common mistakes that are made in distance learning probably the most common mistake is putting too much emphasis on the materials part of distance education developing materials is is costly it's time consuming it takes a lot of effort and institutions when they're beginning with distance education tend to really seriously focus on that aspect and neglect the the other two very important parts which are management and administration systems and learner support systems in Africa we use an image of an African three-legged stool and we say that the three legs must be equally strong and robust otherwise the stool is not going to be able to do its job and that that seems to help people and so I would say that's that's the most common mistake that can be mitigated of course if you ensure that your management systems are as strong and as well developed and you give as much attention to them as you do to your materials development the other common mistake is underestimating the amount of time that it takes to develop materials if you've not done this before teachers seem to think well we you know we develop materials all the time for teaching and learning but particularly with a team approach it does take longer because other people are involved and different specialist roles are involved and so most managers institutional managers do underestimate just how long it's going to take from designing a distance learning course to actually being able to offer it and quite often institutions get forced by you know policymakers to launch programs long before they're actually ready I have been involved in many programs where we've been forced to launch when we've only got the first module ready and it's not a nice experience so those are the most common mistakes in terms of of institutions the other common mistake I think is that there's this idea in circulation in governments that distance education is is cheaper than than conventional education research carried out by rumble and cool has shown in in open schooling for example indeed secondary education can be provided through distance learning at about two two-thirds of the cost of conventional education but that can only happen when you've got certain management systems in place when you've got robust financial models in place and there are good quality assurance mechanisms and I think also in terms of institutions that's another another mistake that's often made which is not using quality criteria as your your planning planning tool and we tend to focus on quality criteria for distance education developed by Nadiosa which is the national association of distance education organizations in southern Africa and they have a very comprehensive set of quality criteria which make a good planning tool as well as a good monitoring and evaluation tool so what advice would you give to distance learning leaders both institutional leaders and government leaders oh there's a range of advice that that we give leaders of institutions and government people involved in distance education distance education is usually employed to meet national objectives of increasing access to various education systems I'm reminded of something Tony Dodds wrote in the open school where he said that you know one of the critical success factors is that there is this robust funding model for from government to the institution all the things that we've talked about earlier of ensuring that distance education is properly resourced but Tony also drew attention to the idea of institutional leadership being innovative and entrepreneurial and this is certainly something that we found in the TVA institutions that we work with institutions need to take a different approach a different view of the learner it's the learner as a customer and you know you don't see that so much in conventional education but it's absolutely critical in in well functioning distance education systems institutions need to provide a service to their learners and this is quite a change for both ministry people as well as institutional managers as we said earlier there's a strong focus on staff development when you're introducing a distance education system but it tends to be focused on at the institutional level so the teachers and the managers get a lot of capacity building and the advice I would give is to ensure that policymakers and ministry officials also get that staff development are also exposed to you know the differences between conventional and distance education in order that they can help to manage the process ministry officials are responsible for monitoring and evaluation for accreditation systems and for the policies that guide you know educational provision so if they don't understand and buy in to distance education methodologies as much as institutional staff and managers then there's a mismatch so I think that's probably the strongest advice I would give staff development for ministry officials but also cultivating that innovation and entrepreneurial spirit because that's what will help to make it a viable business model and ultimately sustainable because the importance of distance education is that in the long term through these new teaching and learning methodologies we will actually be able to provide quality education to the increasing number of people who need it. Many thanks Alison for sharing your insights with us today I know that people who've seen this video will learn a lot from you I certainly have thank you thank you