During the last ten years, the Internet and the World Wide Web have fundamentally altered the practice of distance teaching and learning. Nowhere is this fact more evident than in the transformation undergone by single-mode distance universities as they seek to apply the benefits of emerging information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to their core business, with a view to improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of the learning experience afforded their students.

By the mid 1990s, Canada's Open University®, Athabasca University, was ripe for change.1 Not only was the technological world that had hitherto enabled distance education undergoing radical and rapid change, but so too was the University's political environment, as debt reduction and elimination became the rallying cries of provincial public policy. Moreover, Athabasca University, Alberta's fourth public university, had under-performed during the ten previous years, as evidenced by the fact that in 1994-1995 it suffered from the highest government grant per full-load-equivalent student, the highest tuition fee level amongst the province's public universities, and a dismally low graduation rate. Concerned with this state of affairs, the Government of Alberta announced that it would reduce Athabasca University's base budget by 31 per cent over three years (ten per cent more than the reduction applied to the other universities), and that it expected significant increases in enrolment and cost effectiveness.

Today, this institution has risen to the challenge and serves some 30,000 students per year (a threefold increase over 1995), has more than tripled its graduation rate, commands the lowest tuition fees and per full-load-equivalent student base grant in the province, and, most importantly, enjoys the highest ratings among sister institutions in the biannual, provincially administered learner satisfaction surveys of university graduates.

To Download this E-Book Click Here.