Is the First Generation of
Open and Distance Education Out of Date?

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.