Asian Association of Open Universities
Annual Conference
Tianjin, China - October 14-16, 2008
Theme:
New Developments, New Trends and New Missions of Open and Distance Education in Asia and the World
Distance Education across Borders
Keynote address by
Sir John Daniel, Professor Asha Kanwar and Paul West
Commonwealth of Learning
&
Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić
UNESCO
Introduction
It is a pleasure to be back in China and to attend another AAOU conference. I have long considered that AAOU is one of the world's most effective associations for distance learning. That effectiveness continues to grow as AAOU's membership, and the institutions that make it up, expand and diversify. 
It is good to be in Tianjin for the first time. This is China's year for hosting important events. I congratulate our Chinese colleagues on the success of the summer Olympics. I come from Vancouver, where we shall host the winter Olympics in 2010. The citizens of Vancouver intend to produce an event that is a worthy successor to the event that you held in Beijing in August. We just hope there will be more snow!
Along with my co-authors and the Commonwealth of Learning I also congratulate the Tianjin Radio and TV University and the China Central Radio and TV University on hosting the AAOU. It is always a pleasure to come to China. Now that China has by far the world's largest higher education system this is a most appropriate place to hold a meeting of open universities, which are dedicated, above all, to widening access to higher education of quality taking advantage of all the wonderful new tools that are becoming available.
The theme of your conference is New Developments, New Trends and New Missions of Open and Distance Education in Asia and the World.
You have asked me to talk about Distance Education across Borders. Although I am making this presentation I acknowledge the co-authors who have thought with me about this activity: Professor Asha Kanwar, Vice-President and Programme Director of the Commonwealth of Learning; Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić, Chief of the Section for Reform, Innovation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education at UNESCO and Paul West, Director of Information Technology and Knowledge Management at COL. 
Our plan is as follows. We shall first point out that education across borders - even distance education across borders - is not a new development. However, there are new trends within this activity that we must explore. We shall focus particularly on three of them: the use of eLearning to strengthen higher education generally; the creation of open educational resources; and the challenges of quality assurance and standards, including the problem of degree mills. As we examine these trends we shall ask, in the spirit of your conference theme, if they create new missions for open and distance education.
Education across Borders
Let us begin with some comments about the history of education across borders.
The origins of cross-border higher education (CBHE) go back many centuries. Early in the 7th century Huen Tsang was one of many Chinese scholars who studied at Nalanda University in India, which can claim to be the world's first international university. Paris was the great international university centre of the second millennium and Erasmus of Rotterdam, who studied there and in other universities around Europe in the 16th century, has given his name to the student exchanges that are re-uniting academic Europe. Despite occasional hiccups - tradition has it that English students thrown out of Paris for rowdy behaviour went home and established Oxford as a centre of study - such academic mobility has been seen historically as a civilising phenomenon.
In imperial days the famous - and relatively few - universities in the home countries were beacons for those bright natives of the colonies who aspired to join the elites. For some this involved travel, but the celebration in 2008 of the 150th anniversary of the External Studies Programme of the University of London, reminds us that staying at
home and studying at a distance with a university overseas is not a new phenomenon. The attraction of universities overseas remains strong.
A remarkable book, entitled The People's University 1858-2008, was published to mark the 150th anniversary of London's external studies programme. It is a beautifully illustrated account of a programme that has innovated in open education for one and a half centuries and produced five Nobel laureates along the way (Jones, 2008).
In 1858 the University of London made the radical innovation of delinking access to its examinations from study in any institution. You only had to register for the examination. You did not have to attend a college or pay for study materials. This opened up the possibility of a university degree to those who had to go on earning a living while they studied, making higher education available to a far wider range of social classes and occupations. It broke the link between place and study. A magazine published by the 19th century novelist Charles Dickens coined the term The People's University for the new venture and proposed 'the young shoemaker in his garret' as an icon for the new type of student. All open universities have images of the students we are trying to reach.
Nearly 40 years ago Walter Perry told the UKOU staff to create a teaching and learning system that could serve 'a lighthouse keeper on an island off the Scottish coast'. What images do your universities have of the students you are trying to reach?
Because the London External Studies programme delinked place and study it became attractive to many students outside the UK and still attracts many thousands today. Although it is over a century old, the notion of conducting distance education across borders by focusing primarily on examinations could become a very modern concept for expanding access. Today, through the Internet, students have access to a huge range of information and learning materials - including the open educational resources that we shall talk about in a moment.
Students are now in a position to choose how much help, in the form of study materials and tutoring, they need from the university that will examine them. Some may decide that if they are given a clear outline of the curriculum and some examples of previous examination papers they can prepare for the examination by themselves and save money.
We shall return to this in our conclusion and ask if such a model could be the answer to the challenges of access, quality and cost that higher education faces in many countries.
Strengthening higher education through ODL
But first we shall explore three trends, starting with the use of distance learning across borders as a means for strengthening higher education generally. This could be seen as a new mission for Open and Distance Learning (ODL). Over the four decades that modern multi-media ODL has existed it has gradually joined the mainstream of higher education. That is a tribute to the work of your institutions.
Today we are at the point where ODL is helping to expand and enrich conventional higher education in classrooms. Nearly all campus universities are dabbling in eLearning and this is changing the nature of these institutions, the expectations of their students and the role of the academic staff.
The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC)
We shall illustrate this trend with the example of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth that the Commonwealth of Learning is facilitating on behalf of thirty of the world's smallest countries. Some of your open universities have student bodies that are far more numerous than the entire populations of many of these countries, but we make no apology for talking about them. We live in a diverse world with diverse needs.
The world's small states tend to have fragile economies and to be especially vulnerable to natural disasters of all kinds: volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes and the inexorable rise in sea levels. Like all countries they need to expand higher education to reach a greater proportion of their populations. However, they face particular challenges because they do not have the critical mass of people, expertise or technology to do many of the things that you take for granted.
Thirty of the world's smallest countries have embraced distance education across borders as a way of reinforcing their tertiary institutions and increasing national autonomy by acting collectively. They are doing this through the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) which aims to bridge the digital divide through a combination of eLearning materials development and training.
The concept of the VUSSC emerged when the Commonwealth Ministers of Education met in the millennium year, 2000. It was the year of the dotcom frenzy when the Internet began to revolutionise communication between people and create new ways of doing business. Online communication seemed to have potential for transforming education.
The ministers of education from the small states wanted to take advantage of online communication in developing their education systems but realised that their individual countries did not have the critical mass of expertise, equipment or bandwidth to engage resolutely with online learning.
However, they hoped that by working together they could nurture an indigenous capacity for online learning and so harness the new ICT developments for the benefit of their peoples. They believed that by working together their small states could create more than the sum of their individual efforts.
The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth was the mechanism that the ministers invented for this collaboration. Despite its name, the VUSSC is a collaborative network, not a new tertiary institution. It is owned by the countries and their existing tertiary institutions as a collective mechanism for producing, adapting and deploying courses and learning materials that would be difficult for any one country to develop alone.
At the same time the VUSSC provides a special opportunity for people to develop expertise in online collaboration, eLearning and ICTs generally. Although the ICT infrastructure in many small states is still rudimentary, especially outside the main population centres, the ministers conceive the VUSSC as a route into the online world. The initial drive in the use of ICTs is to orientate professionals, academics and managers to interact with comfort in a networked, or "web2" world.
Even if its first courses have to be delivered by the traditional means of face-to-face and distance methods to some students, they will be developed in formats that can be shared electronically between participating countries. These thirty small states, which are a blend of island, landlocked and coastal countries spanning the world, have chosen to focus on creating postsecondary skills-related courses, in eLearning formats, in areas such as tourism, entrepreneurship, professional development for teachers, disaster management and a range of technical and vocational subjects. These non-proprietary, electronically-held course materials, which can readily be adapted to the specific context of each country, are used in the offering of credit-bearing qualifications in the countries' post-secondary institutions, strengthening their educational capacity and outreach. The materials will be used both for distance learning and in the classroom. Thus the VUSSC is a way of networking the existing institutions so as to expand access, deepen their curricula, improve the quality of their offerings and enable them to operate confidently in the eWorld.
To increase the cadre of ICT-skilled people and launch the development of eLearning materials in each new subject area, COL convenes a three-week workshop in one of the small states. The other states that are interested in developing that subject send experts to the workshop. At the workshop they get training in methods of distance education design and development, collaborative development strategies and tools, and a range of different technologies that are used in eLearning development. Participants acquire these skills while working on real courses.
In order to facilitate the use of programmes offered by institutions in the small states, the VUSSC has worked with the South African Qualifications Authority to develop a Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF). It aims to promote comparability between countries and regions, and give greater credibility to the eLearning courses developed within the framework of the VUSSC and offered internationally.
During 2008 a portal or hub is being created for VUSSC that will provide access to online programmes offered by accredited institutions in VUSSC countries. These institutions, having already received accreditation from their national system, will be able to promote selected programmes in the international market, through the VUSSC portal. Once eLearning programmes have been provided by these countries and approved by the national and regional structures, they will be posted on the VUSSC website. Posting of programmes on the VUSSC website will signify that the programme is credible, i.e. it accords with national and regional qualifications structures and relates to the TQF.
Clients will register for these programmes with the knowledge that programmes offered through the portal carry the national accreditation of the country in which the providing institution is based. In addition to this, clients will be able to review the comparability of the qualification with their own country by reviewing the qualification's registration in the TQF. This question of credibility is particularly important for small states some of which, advertently or inadvertently, have acquired reputations as safe havens for degree mills.
Open Educational Resources
Our description of the VUSSC leads naturally to the next trend that we shall explore, namely the emergence of the concept of open educational resources. The movement that they represent, which is a vital component of the wider movement to foster a global intellectual commons, holds great promise for educational development. OERs are a fundamental element of the VUSSC because it aims to share learning materials freely not only between the participating small states, but worldwide.
The trend to make educational resources open to all was given momentum in 2001 when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) surprised people by making the course notes of its faculty available on the web for all to see. This launched the OER movement with all the prestige of a world-class institution. The material on display is information on course curricula rather than self-learning materials, but it is widely consulted as a benchmark by faculty and students around the world, notably here in China.
In 2006 the UK Open University took this concept one stage further with its OpenLearn initiative. This makes self-learning materials, student support and collaboration tools available on the web. OpenLearn receives some 100,000 visits a week and is intended to be of more direct value to students than the MIT material. The site also has a LabSpace where people can mix, match and adapt the materials.
If MIT's OpenCourseware shares information and the UKOU's OpenLearn shares learning, then the next step is to share teaching ― or course development - which is what 30 countries are doing through the VUSSC as we have just described. So in a short time OERs have progressed from sharing curricular information to sharing learning materials to sharing the preparation of learning materials.
The purpose of an Open Educational Resource is to be freely available for people around the world to use. It is another example of the trend that we just explored, namely to use distance learning - because OERs are a product of distance learning - to strengthen higher education generally. But what do we mean by freely available? How open are open educational resources? How open should they be? This is now a topic of lively debate. Open universities must make decisions about these questions since they will likely become major producers of OERs.
The history of OERs is an example of a development that has become rather controversial as it has progressed. OERs are an expression of the freedom culture, of which Wikipedia is the most famous product. Adherents to this culture are convinced that democracy will yield truth. In other words, they believe that the examination and collaborative revision of an article on, say, solar energy, by all who might have views and knowledge about solar energy, will produce an accurate and reliable statement on that topic. This may be true in many cases but can academic quality assurance always be based on such an act of faith?
One might define a fully open OER as educational material that anyone can take, adapt and use for any purpose without acknowledgement. Very few creators of OERs aim for this level of openness. Most originators of OERs put them under a Creative Commons (CC) licence, which at a minimum requires the user to acknowledge where the material came from (the "BY" restriction) and to share any derivative work under the same licence (the Share-Alike ("SA") restriction). All material on WikiEducator, an electronic materials development space that COL helped to create must be licensed like this.
However, some creators of OERs find it appropriate to place the No Derivatives ("ND") restriction on the CC licence in order to prevent adaptations of their material. This might be appropriate, for example, with a document listing standards that had been approved by a particular body. Allowing anyone to change the document would negate the notion of approved standards.
More controversy is generated by the use of the Non Commercial ("NC") restriction, which MIT applies to its OpenCourseware OERs and the UK Open University applies to OERs on its OpenLearn website. Their aim is to prevent others from using their materials in profit-making educational initiatives. Others are concerned that individuals who have dedicated substantial time and energy to creating royalty-free materials ― without fully understanding the legal consequences ― may find that their hard work allows overseas companies to make profits while they themselves earn nothing from their labours. This could apply to academics in developing countries, to whom the production and use of OERs is particularly attractive.
Eventually time and experience will resolve these issues. Meanwhile institutions must tread carefully as they take advantage of the growing pool of OERs to enrich and improve their own teaching and to foster the notion of a global intellectual commons by contributing OERs to it. We hope that the term OER will continue to be used in a flexible way to mean teaching, learning and research resources that are made freely available by individuals, institutions, organizations and governments to others under a range of copyright licenses that permit their use for open and distance learning, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees.
We are aware of a move to limit the term OER to materials where use is only constrained by the BY and SA restrictions. This would mean that materials with NC or ND restrictions, such as those made available by MIT and the UKOU would not be considered as OERs. Such a move would be silly in my view and we should fight to maintain a broad meaning for OERs. If OER does become a restrictive term COL would adopt another term, such as Open Learning Resources, or OLRs to cover a more flexible interpretation. But these are details. The important thing is that we urge you all to take part in the movement and to contribute materials to it.
Quality Assurance
New approaches to providing products or services tend to raise questions about quality in all areas of endeavour, but especially so in education - particularly when the aim of the new approaches is to expand access. We just asked this question in relation to Open Educational Resources. Since the whole function of OERs is to be constantly changed and adapted for different circumstances, monitoring their quality is a special challenge.
But this is true of all aspects of distance education across borders. It rings alarm bells with governments because it involves foreigners and it often gives a bigger role for the private sector. Some feel that adapted materials and those over which national educational systems do not have control could infringe on national values and impact negatively on people's morals, religions, cultures and traditional knowledge.
One response to these concerns has been for governments to work together internationally through their intergovernmental agencies. For example, one outcome of UNESCO's standard-setting activities was the development, jointly with the OECD, of the 2005 Guidelines for Quality Provision in CBHE. The Guidelines address six groups of stakeholders in HE: governments, HE institutions, student bodies, recognition bodies, quality assurance bodies and professional bodies. They recommend actions based on collaboration, foster mutual trust and confidence and encourage access to reliable and transparent information. The overall aim is to promote quality as cross-border higher education grows.
To foster ongoing attention to the issue of quality in CBHE UNESCO has created a space for policy debate through its Global Forum on International Quality Assurance, Accreditation and the Recognition of Qualifications that was launched in 2002. The Global Forum was conceived as a response to the ethical challenges and dilemmas facing higher education in an era of globalisation. Its mission was to provide a platform for exchange between different partners and initiate debate on the social, political, economic and cultural dimensions underpinning globalisation and higher education. Its third meeting was held in Tanzania in 2007.
Degree Mills
Governments are well aware of the challenge created for higher education by the phenomenon of degree mills, a general term for spurious enterprises that sell qualifications without the demonstration of learning competency required by genuine institutions. Degree mills are a consequence of burgeoning demand for higher education allied to global communications through the Internet. They pose a threat to personal and national security.
Most employers, who are lazy about checking the credentials presented to them, think that the holders of phoney diplomas actually have the knowledge and skills they claim. Phoney medical qualifications are particularly alarming to the public but all bogus qualifications are potentially a danger to society. The Internet is giving degree mills new opportunities to deceive people and to change the colour of their operations quickly, like chameleons, when trouble hits.
The Web also makes it easy to attempt to borrow credibility from international bodies such as UNESCO by aping aspects of their websites. However, the Internet is a game that anyone can play and the worldwide quality establishment could do much more to use the Internet to steer people away from the spurious operators.
Small and fragile states are a favourite prey of degree mills and some are perceived as a safe haven for them. However, when a country gains a reputation for hosting degree mills it risks being put on informal blacklists. Governments and bona fide institutions in other countries may refuse to accept any educational qualification from the blacklisted country. Furthermore, because bogus degrees are usually offered over the Internet some jurisdictions have imposed an outright ban on the recognition of any online degrees.
There is no magic bullet that will kill degree mills. Their suppression requires a concerted effort by all interested parties. Governments should take action, through legislation and enforcement, to close the out-and-out scams. Trade ministries should not give business licences to HE institutions without reference to the national quality assurance systems. Employers, academic admissions officers and immigration authorities should check the authenticity of all credentials presented to them and senior politicians should be more careful about giving photo opportunities to smooth-talking confidence tricksters.
Quality agencies should work from the credible end of the continuum between established universities and degree mills and extend the proportion of credible institutions. The key is to instil a professional quality assurance culture that obliges institutions to internalise their quality processes. All branches of government must back these agencies and see that their remit covers all higher education institutions, private and public.
Once countries know which institutions on their territory are credible and which are not they can list them on the portal of legitimate accredited institutions that UNESCO is creating. The key goal is to establish and develop good quality assurance systems for higher education in all countries.
Standards
However, despite advances in quality assurance there is now some disillusionment with current systems. This arises because most quality assurance systems try to judge whether an institution or a programme is meeting its declared objectives. Some stakeholders, governments in particular, now ask questions about the objectives themselves. What merit is there in achieving easy objectives?
This scepticism is leading to a greater focus on standards, which means paying less attention to institutional processes and more attention to what students know and can do when they have finished their programmes. Were this concentration on standards to become more general it could give new relevance to the system of examinations pioneered by the University of London 150 years ago. At that time the member of Parliament for the University declared bluntly, 'what I mean by a University is an examination board'.
KNOWLEDGE ALONE
Another of the pioneers of the system expressed it more elegantly when he said: 'Knowledge alone must be tested. There is no substitute for it. The University and the public are not concerned to inquire 'when or where' it was obtained. ..Unlike more worldly stores, knowledge can hardly be acquired dishonestly, or without elevating the character of him who has achieved it'. We are sure that open universities would empathize with that statement.
A major strength of open universities is that they run examination systems on a large scale, which means that the examinations and their marking are likely more rigorous, or at least less susceptible to personal influence and corruption, than exams set and marked by academics for their own small classes.
A model for access with quality at low cost
This suggests a model that would enable higher education to expand rapidly in the developing world by being readily scalable (wide access), academically credible (high quality) and affordable (low cost). It could be achieved by building higher education around credible examination systems run by national or independent bodies or established institutions, such as open universities, and then encouraging a market of support providers to develop. Although the range of examinations would need to match the wide array of higher education programmes on offer, there is considerable room for aggregation and for some existing institutions to act as examining bodies for others.
Open universities could also be support providers, but the essence of the model is that it would allow students to choose how much support they need and are ready to pay for. Some would simply pay for the examination and find support for themselves, for instance by using open educational resources on the web.
Conclusion
We have explored developments in cross border distance education, noting the advantages and challenges they bring with them.
We have also noted constructive and progressive initiatives in support of cross-border higher education such UNESCO's Global Forum, its Guidelines on Quality Assurance and its portal of recognised institutions. There is also VUSSC's new portal of online programmes offered by credible institutions in small states. As education changes, institutions need to be cognisant of the implications. Governments should act collectively, through their intergovernmental organisations such as UNESCO and COL, to develop global public goods in support of international education.
Advancing technology continues to provide new opportunities for distance education across borders. Soon, half the world's people will have access to cell phones and access to the Internet grows apace.
Finally, the key challenge for global higher education is still to expand access by providing high quality programmes at low cost. This cannot be done by traditional face-to-face teaching methods and even distance education is still unaffordable to many.
One way of expanding access at low cost would be to develop systems based on examinations that give students the freedom to obtain the support from any source as needed. Open universities, which have great expertise in running large-scale examination systems, could play a key role in such a development.