By Junhong Xiao
Emeritus Professor, Open University of Shantou
Whether open and distance education (ODE) is divided into three generations or five, the first is always the correspondence model. The evolution of this field is structured along a continuum ranging from low tech and even no tech to high tech, depending on how we define technology. As Terry Anderson and Jon Dron rightly observed 14 years ago in their seminal article entitled “Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy”, “none of these generations has been eliminated over time; rather, the repertoire of options available to DE designers and learners has increased”. However, in reality, the emergence of a new generation often dominates the mainstream discourse even to such an extent that earlier generations are ousted, as is the case with educational technology. A case in point is the new buzzword of artificial intelligence (AI) or generative AI (GenAI) which has overshadowed other earlier digital technologies in the discourse surrounding education for the 21st century.
“Although most of us are all still trying to come to terms with the sweeping social and educational implications of these earlier revolutions which are still unfolding, we have, in the past several months, awoken to find ourselves abruptly entering yet another digital revolution – one which may make the others look minor by comparison. This is the AI revolution.” This apt observation was made by Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education UNESCO, in her reflections on GenAI and the future of education.
the diseases that education has contracted seem incurable because each previous generation of technology has promised to put this ailing system right but to no avail.
Today, when we talk about off-campus education, what immediately comes into our mind is most probably online, digital, or smart education. While everything is online, digital and smart, education should be no exception. Going online, digital, and smart is a goal that many open universities vow to achieve (see my guest feature in Issue 22). In the eyes of many educators and politicians, digital technologies are the holy grail of the ailing education system. For example, the Indian Government launched the National Digital University Initiative which “aims to revolutionize
higher education using 21st-century digital
technologies” and “makes quality education
flexible, accessible, and available to every student
in India, anytime and anywhere”, a utopia that
has long been aspired to around the world.
Nevertheless, the diseases that education has
contracted seem incurable because each previous
generation of technology has promised to put this
ailing system right but to no avail. Then, how can
we be so sure that digital technologies are the
magic wand?
In recent decades, educational reform has
turned into a race for new technologies. Each
new generation of technology ignites a new craze
for educational reform because all educational
problems arguably have a technological fix. If we
take this trend for granted and even follow suit,
digital technologies including GenAI will no doubt
be replaced, in due course, by newer technologies
that are sure to emerge. As in the past, we have
yet to work out how these new technologies can
be leveraged to solve educational problems before
we have no choice but to be involved in another
technological revolution just as Stefania Giannini
put it. This is an eternal and hence unbreakable
cycle, unless we do something to it.
Equity in education has been a major theme in
my recent publications. My main argument is that
technologies which are more cutting-edge and
more expensive are not necessarily better suited
for (open and distance) education. In other words,
when it comes to technology in education, the “the
newer, the costlier, the better” logic does not apply.
Informed by this argument, I have advocated for
the orchestration of a continuum of options from
high-tech to low-tech to no-tech with choices to
cater for socio-economic diversity and disparity,
among other things, rather than any single mode
to meet the diverse needs of the general populace.
The digital age should not rule out non-digital or
non-high-tech solutions to educational problems.
I have defended my argument chiefly from two
angles: the affordability/cost-effectiveness for
educational institutions and individual students
alike as well as the effectiveness of technology-enhanced/enabled education.
Socio-economic diversity and disparity
is a global phenomenon. It exists even in the
most developed countries, not to mention less
developed countries. Take the United States.
According to the 2024 National Educational
Technology Plan of the U.S. Department of
Education, Office of Educational Technology,
“Despite significant growth in school technology
use, many learners, families/caregivers, and
communities still lack access to reliable, high-speed
broadband and technology tools. In the
United States, more than 18 million households
continue to face challenges gaining access to
reliable, high-speed broadband… Furthermore,
Black and Hispanic learners are less likely to
have a computer at home compared to white
peers. Overall, an estimated 15 to 16 million
K-12 learners do not have sufficient access to
reliable, high-speed broadband and technology
tools for learning.” This begs the question of the
affordability/cost-effectiveness of technology-enhanced/enabled education for all.
My main argument is that technologies which are more cutting-edge and more expensive are not necessarily better suited for (open and distance) education.
As for the effectiveness of technology-enhanced/enabled education, Thomas L.
Russell’s paper, “The ‘No Significant Difference’
Phenomenon” is often cited as evidence that
technology-based education is as good as non-technology-based education. If this is the case,
why should we care about technology in education
unless it is the cheaper option? As a matter of
fact, despite a century’s history of technology
in education, we have yet to see large-scale,
independent/third-party, verifiable evidence of the
effectiveness of technology-enhanced/enabled
education. Furthermore, not all its claimed benefits
are, pedagogically speaking, tenable; they are
either not what education is supposed to be
about or incompatible with human cognitive or
intellectual development patterns, as I have argued
elsewhere.
In this article, I will continue to build the case
from a third angle – human right. Education is a
human right. Therefore, every single individual
is entitled to the right to choose the mode
of education that they feel most comfortable
with either because it fits their idiosyncratic
learning style or because it enables them to
cope with diverse commitments. For instance,
correspondence education, the first generation
of ODE, is not necessarily only for those who
cannot afford technology-enhanced/enabled
mode of learning. Correspondence education can
be the preferred option for those who, though
economically advantaged, deliberately opt for this
“less advanced” mode of learning because it is
more suitable for their learning style or makes it
possible for them to handle multiple commitments
concurrently.
When the human right perspective popped into
my head, honestly speaking, I was not so certain
whether correspondence education remains an
important component of ODE in today’s so-called
digital age, until I was conducting a study on the
impact of ODE on higher education in China.
China’s tertiary ODE started with
correspondence education offered by Renmin
University of China, a top Chinese university,
in 1953, not long after the People’s Republic of
China was founded. Soon afterwards, numerous
other reputed universities in China followed suit,
in response to the government’s call to overcome
the acute shortage of well-educated workforces
that were badly needed in new China. The tertiary
adult education landscape in China had featured
correspondence education, evening classes and
part-time/off-hours classes in addition to radio and
television education in several metropolises until
1979 when the country implemented the second
generation of ODE by establishing China Central
Radio and Television University, renamed as the
Open University of China in 2012, which has been
a dedicated national network of ODE since the
very beginning.
Despite these efforts, the supply of higher
education graduates was not sufficient enough to
meet the demand at a time when China started to
implement the opening-up agenda to recover from
the catastrophic damages on its socioeconomic
development due to the devastating Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976). Therefore, in 1981, China
established the Higher Education Examinations for
Self-taught Learners (HEESL) system to diversify
talent-training channels and expand adult higher
education enrolment in a cost-effective and
scalable manner. HEESL is basically another form
of correspondence education but allows learners
more flexibility in many aspects. Even judging from
today’s criteria, HEESL is the most open mode of
ODE. Anyone can register for HEESL when they
feel they are ready, regardless of age, gender,
and previous education qualifications. They are
self-taught, free from restraints on study time,
place and duration. Of course, they can enrol on
tutorials offered by for-profit tutoring centres if
they want to. It is affordable to almost anyone in
that they only have to pay for study materials and
examination fees. Finally, it is state-administered
and universally taken to be strict and fair in all
senses. When learners accumulate enough credits
for an award required by an examining campusbased
university, they can apply for one.
The digital age should not rule out non-digital or non-high-tech solutions to educational problems.
Even with this addition, in the last two decades
of the twentieth century, the second-generation
ODE provided by the radio and television university
network was the most high-profile model of ODE
in China. It was not until 1999 that the second
generation of ODE gradually disappeared from
both the media and official discourse. In that year,
China launched the Modern Distance Education
Initiative intended to take advantage of the then
cutting-edge technology of ICT to further open up
education. This heralded the implementation of the
third-generation ODE in China which was soon in
the spotlight in lieu of the second generation. In
addition to the open university network, 68 reputed
Chinese campus-based universities were also
involved in this initiative, which rendered it even
more eye-catching. Networked or online education
is now the synonymy of ODE.
Against this backdrop, people may wonder
whether there is still a market for the firstgeneration
ODE. Since 1981, about 70 million
people have taken HEESL with about 16 million
graduates. The number of HEESL graduates
was only 3.5 million fewer than that of open
university graduates in the same period. As
for correspondence education, take the latest
statistics of 2022. The number of correspondence
education graduates was 2,201,555, which
accounts for over one-third (37%) of the total
number of adult education graduates or 15% of
the total number of higher education graduates.
Correspondence programmes enrolled 3,243,509
students, which represented 45% of the total adult
education enrolment or 18% of the total higher
education enrolment.
despite a century’s history of technology in education, we have yet to see large-scale, independent/third-party, verifiable evidence of the effectiveness of technology-enhanced/enabled education.
These figures bear a powerful testament to my advocacy of a continuum of options from high-tech to low-tech to no-tech. None of the generations of ODE is replaceable as Anderson and Dron put it. The co-existence of different generations of ODE is the reality, whether we admit it or not. As for OUs, especially those in less developed countries, we should continue to give full play to our expertise in earlier generations of ODE not only to accomplish our fundamental mission but also to survive in the intense competition from ambitious new players such as campus-based universities. As the study by David Lim (2024) and colleagues shows, “students’ lack of privileged access to frontier technologies is no barrier to learning success” because “learning outcomes have causality beyond technological determinism” and “educational problems, which OUs may deem as requiring technological solutions, are often non-technological in nature and require no technological fixes” (see their research publication “Resisting Technological Solutionism in Open Universities in the Time of Global Digital Convergence”). This is an acute observation which echoes my stance on technology in ODE.