Reflections on Distance Higher Education in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

Background

Distance education or distance learning is understood as a field of education “taking place with the student physically or geographically removed from the instructor using some form of technology to facilitate learning and contact” (Valentine, 2002). It encompasses programmes that allow the learner and the instructor to be physically apart during the learning process and maintain communication in a variety of ways (Keegan, 1986).

Some people think that distance education began with the invention of the Internet; which is a wrong perception (Moore & Kearsley, 2005). Although scholars have diverse views on when exactly distance learning started, many studies indicate that distance education started in the mid-19^th century (around 1840s) and that nearly all scholars agree that this education was delivered by correspondence (Keegan, 2005; Moore & Kearsley, 2005; Nasseh, 1997; Taylor, 2006). Moore and Kearsley (2005) identify five ‘historical generations’ through which distance education has evolved from correspondence to internet. The authors summarize the five orderly generations as follows: Correspondence, broadcast radio and television, open universities, teleconferencing, and internet or web.