distance education for australian rural high schools

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Journal ofResearclt in Rural Education, Spring, 1994,Vol. 10,No.1, 78-83

Australian Developments in Distance Educationand Their Implications for Rural SchoolsKen StevensVictoria University ofWellington, New Zealand

Distanceeducation has for many years played an important role in the delivery of education to rural partsof Australia. Recent developments in information and communication technologies, togetherwith theadventof federallyfunded open learningat the tertiary level, arechallengingtraditional notions of distanceeducationin Australia. These developments have many implications for Australian rural educators who must nowconsidertheir applications for teachers and learners in remote parts of the country.Traditionally, rural and distance education

have been seen as the provision of schooling forpeople who live in isolated areas. With changes incommunication technologies, however, distanceeducation is perhaps now inappropriately named;"tele-education" more accurately describes it inthe late 20th century.' In Australia, open learninghas received commonwealth approval at the tertiary level and is likely to become an increasinglypopular way of delivering education for the res tof this decade, particularly to non-urban areas ofthe country.

Distance education in Australia has alwaysbeen paper-based, characterised by heavy dependence on postal deliveries of correspondencecourses. Although many dis tance educa tioncourses are likely to continue along these lines,new electronic forms of delivery of education tostudents are currently being examined and evaluated. In the process, distance education in Australia is undergoing a t ransformation and, withthis, the notion of isolation is being reconsidered.Changes in modes of delivery of distance education in Australia are likely to challenge the verynotion of rural education.

Some of the more significant developments incontemporary distance education in Australia include (a) the use ofnew communication technologies,

particularly computers, electronic mail (e-mail), andfaxes;(b) changes in the concept ofDistance EducationCentres (DECs)and the advent of open learning; and(c) theconceptof inter-institutional networking. Theseshould be considered in relation to social andeconomic changes in Australia that are providingcurrent developments in distance education withadded significance: the rate of unemployment,currently estimated to be over one million people;the need to be competitive in international trade,particularly in relation to certa in Asian economies; and the desire to strengthen industry-schoolrelations.For rural communities, there is the ever-presentproblem of rural-urban migration and the maintenance of viable rural infrastructures, an importantaspect of which is the local school. For secondaryschools in rural Australian communities, a majorissue has traditionally been the relatively limitedcurriculum choice that has been made availableand, in particular, the absence of full secondaryschool education that enables students to graduate and enter "tertiary education institutions. Withfewer curriculum choices and the absence of full,local, secondary education, many Australian ruralcommunities can justi fiably claim to have beeneducationally disadvantaged (Schools Commission, 1975; Stevens, 1989, in press).

"Tele-education refers to th e application of communication technologies to th e delivery of education to alearner who is being taught at a distance.20pen learning is more of an approach to distance education than a particular discipline. Its aim is to makeeducation more accessible to people who have in t he pas t been excluded from traditional forms of education.Distance education takes place where the learner is remote from the teacher in th e tele-learning process (Buckrell,Hamilton-WiJliams, McAulay, Prebble, & Rajasingham, 1992).Ken Stevens is Associate Professor in th e Department of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box600, Wellington, New Zealand.


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Australian rural communities are not uniquein facing problems of access to educational re-sources (Stevens, 1991); every country, except citystates like Hong Kong and Singapore, seeks tofind ways of addressing the issue of reachingequality of educationalopportunity for its youngpeople who are reared and educated beyond itsurban areas . Dis tance education has for a longtime provided rural Australians with possibleways of achieving the level of access to educational opportunities that are enjoyed by urbanpeople. Today, however, the possibility ofrealising this elusive goal that has guided ruralAustralian education policy since Karmel (1973)brought it to the nation's attention is enhanced byrecent developments in communication technologies.

Background to Distance Education in AustraliaDistance education has played an importantrole in the provision of educational equity for

learners who live in remote Australian communities. Higgins (1993) has noted that, in Australia,"adopting communications and transport tech-nology is a theme running through rural education as Education Departments sought to maintain a service to remote places while keeping highstaff costs to a minimum." Early distance educat ion in Australia was described by Barlow in 1922:

So that educational assistance may reachparents whose children are situated at a distance from permanent country schools andaway from the tracks followed by itinerantteachers, typed copies of instructions, directions, explanations and illustrations, form-ing a series of lessons on the most importantsubjects included in the Primary School Curriculum, are posted each week from the Pri-mary Correspondence School in Brisbane. .. . Typed copies of weekly lessons carefullygraded are transmitted with accompanyingdirections, some intended for the guidanceof parents . Wri tt en lessons when finishedare then returned to the school for correc-tion, comments and further advice. Themarked lessons are then returned to the homefrom which they have been received. (fromHiggins, 1993, p. 14)Throughout the 20th century, correspondence

schools provided families in' remote Australianlocat ions with their own system of education

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Developments in Distance Education

which, to this day, retains many of the originalteaching methods, outlined above. The School ofthe Air began radio broadcasts in 1960 and quicklybecame an important dimension of distance education in Australia insofar as it enabled students,their parents, and teachers to maintain regularcontact. In 1989, the School of the Air and theCorrespondence Schools became the Schools ofDistance Education. More recently, domestic sat-ellites, personal computers, and modems havebeen utilised in the delivery of education to students in remote locations:

The success of the radio experiment encouraged educators to use the first Australiandomestic satellite for educational purposes.The Department of Education in Queenslandpurchased satellite time to conduct lessonsthrough the Mt. Isa School of the Air foreight remote families. Teachers gave regula r lessons to the isolated students usingthe satellite for two-way audio and one-wayvideo transmissions, linked through studiosin both Mt. Isa and Brisbane. The experiment succeeded in showing that the satellitecould be used for educational purposes.(Higgins, 1993, p. 15)The application of information and communi

cation for the enhancement of education in Aus-tralia has received attention at the highest politi-cal levels. An Apple for the Teacher (Commonwealth of Australia, 1989), the publication of theStanding Committee on Employment, Education,and Training, linked technology and learning ob-jectives. The committee drew attention to theneed for effective management of technology i fdistance education was to succeed, as well as theimportance of schools having compatible hardware and software and adequate preservice in-struction for teachers. Teacher unfamiliarity withnew information and communication technolo-gies was noted, a matter that is likely to impedetheir introduction in Australian classrooms.D'Cruz (1990) examined the application of various types of communication technologies in thestate of Victoria and pointed out the importance ofcommunities cooperating in the choice of technol-ogy in small rural schools. The technologicaldevelopment of rural schools is closely linked tothe economic advancement of rural communities(Department of Primary Industries and Energy,1988; Parker, Hudson, Dillman, & Roscoe, 1989)


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and to the issue of equity with other, particularlyurban, communities (Darnell, 1992).

New Communication Technologiesand Rural Education

At the present time, many new communication technologies are available in Austral ia . Theproblem for educators is knowing which ones arethe most appropriate to use and in what combinations. To a considerable extent, distance education in Australia today is shaped by many combi-nations of technologies, put together in ways thatwere until recently not considered possible. Inparticular, the use of computers and, through them,e-mail, enables students and their teachers to com-municate regardless of loca tion . The addition ofmodems to computers to access libraries and datastored in various locat ions enables senior ruralsecondary students and their teachers to undertake research in major libraries as effectively astheir urban counterparts. For some time now,facsimile machines have been part of the administrative structure of Australian schools; this development is a useful adjunct to the use of e-mail andthe telephone. Perhaps more than most new tech-nologies, it is the enhancement of the telephonetha t has facilitated new forms of communication.

The educational applications of television andradio are not new, but the development of storagefacilities such as videos, tape recorders, and eventelephone-answering machines (as well as reproductive technologies such as paper copiers) meanthat the rural student and teacher today is as wellserved as his or her counterparts in Sydney orMelbourne. A particularly powerful new technology is the arrival of multimedia compact discs thathave the capacity to store a variety of forms ofmaterial (e.g., sound, visual, and print) and thatthe student can access in a variety of ways. Mul-timedia compact discs are, as the name suggests,small and capable of storing previously unheardof amounts of material.

Changes in the Concept of Distance EducationCentres (DECs)and the Advent of Open LearningSince 1989, there have been eight officially

designated DECs; this commonwealth-funded sys-tem was abandoned in 1993. Today, any university in Australia can be a provider of distanceeducation and some of the former DECs have beenabsorbed into larger universities. The promotion


of open learning by the commonwealth government is likely to impact not just on the highereducation system, bu t also on schools in ruralcommunities. Open learning in Australia is headedby a consortium known as the Open LearningAgency of Australia (OLAA). Backed by $50 mil-l ion from the Department of Employment, Education, and Training, and with assistance from ABCradio and television, the OLAA is a companychaired by Monash University in association withsix other universities that reach across the country from Western Australia to Queensland.In effect, but not in name, the consortium is anopen university t hat has been instigated withoutcreating a new and expensive institution. Coursesthat are provided through the OLAA are madeavailable by the member universities and studentscan access them, through the OLAA, anywhere inthe country. For example, a student may take acourse on renaissance literature from a Queenslanduniversity, a course in 19th century French his-tory from a South Austra lian institution, and athird course in the history of science from a West-ern Australian university. Universities that com-prise the consor tium must ensure tha t studentscan obtain credit for work with them which mayhave been completed through several other members of the OLAA. There has, therefore, to bemutual recognition of courses provided by members of the consortium.

The OLAA is of interest to rural educatorsbecause of two features: it has an unlimited ca-pacity to provide tertiary education studies, and itallows for low cost non-campus study. There is tobe substantial use of television and some use ofradio so tha ted uca tional programmes can be madeeasily accessible and del ivered anywhere in thecount ry . There will be no open learning degreesin Australia, unlike Britain, as the OLAA is not auniversity in its own right. Students who takecourses through the OLAA will eventually receivedegrees from one of the members of the consortium. Although s tudent s are enrol led with theOLAA and not with a particular university, theycan at any time request degree credit f rom one ofthe OLAA members.In the future, DECs are likely to have a lot lessinfluence on distance education policy in Australia than they have had in the recent past and areinstead destined, in some cases, to becomingcoursedevelopment centres through which material willbe prepared for open learners. Open learning,through the Monash University consortium, istherefore l ikely to lead a new generation of dis-

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tance education in Australia, characterised by thenetworking of tertiary education institutionsacross the country . The concept of educationalnetworking that is being developed by the OLAAwill be of interest to rural educators.

Inter-Institutional NetworkingRural education has always been characterisedby at least some degree of geographic isolation,

particularly in states like Queensland and Western Australia. While rural schools will alwaysremain geographically distant from urban centres, today they need no t be isolated from schoolsand educational institutions in other parts of thecountry. As geographically distant schools become electronically linked or networked, the relat ionship between rural education and isolationwill lessen. With the system of delivery that isbeing pioneered by the OLAA, together with theapplication of new communication technologiesto education in Australia, rural educators are nowin the posit ion to being able to reconsider theorganisation of their schools.

Rural schools will not be as isolated in thefuture as they have been in the past. Schools inrural areas can now be electronically linked toclasses in other parts of the country, although theissue of time zones has to be considered. It ispossible to receive a lesson in a rural school on,say, physics or Japanese grammar, taught from anurban classroom. Similarly, it is possible for urban students to receive a lesson on conservation,or the environment, from their rural counterpartsand to ask questions, hold a tele-tutorial, or conduct a piece of research together. With schoolslinked for educational purposes, rural studentsare isolated only by geography.

Following the example of the OLAA, ruralschools may in the future form consortia. Thisidea has particular attraction for the provision ofsenior secondary education in remote locations.Students of economics from, for example, JuliaCreek in Queensland, Geraldton in Western Australia, Katherine in the Northern Territory, andStrahan in Tasmania could form a class by linkingelectronically to hold a tele-tutorial under theguidance of a tutor who could be located anywhere in the country. In another subject, some ofthese students may link with classes in other locations. In the same way as a Year 12 student in anurban secondary school moves from class to class


for different subjects during a school day, ruralstudents can move through his or her electronicclassrooms.

Teachers in many rural schools today are ableto pioneer the application of new communicationtechnologies and, in so doing, become leaders intheir profession in the area of networked education and the de live ry of information. With theadvent of open learning in the country's highereducation system, the idea of networking betweeneducational institutions will become widely accepted. It is in the country's rural schools that theapplicationof this skill is particularly useful as ithas the potential to considerably expand the curriculum. In some cases, inter-institutional alliances may develop whereby two schools share ascarce resource such as the appointment of a Japanese language teacher who would be expected toconduct some classes using electronic media toenable students in another school to join in his orher classes. An example of this in Australia'stertiary education sector is the joint teaching of aMaster's degree in distance education by the University of South Australia and Deakin University.Hopeful ly, the value of expertise developed byteachers in rural schools in the accessing of information electronically and the running of teleclasses will be recognised by the teaching profession.Vocational choice has for a long t ime been aproblem for rural senior secondary school students (Stevens, 1989; Stevens & Mason, 1992) andthis has been a common reason for rural-urbanmigration. Teachers are not usually skilled in theprovision of vocational advice and assistance inthe transition f rom school to work. Advances incommunication technologies can assist young rural people and their families to obtain up to dateinformation about non-local careers and to makedecisions about them. One way in which thiscould happen is through peer interaction duringtele-tu torials.

Rural communities in many parts of Australiahave for decades suffered the effects of out-migration. When a local school is run down orperceived to be inferior to other schools by a ruralcommunity, people will consider migrating forthe sake of their children's education. If , however, rural schools are seen to be receiving thesame lessons as students in urban classrooms-asdescribed above-many families may reconsiderthe costly move to an urban area.

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Implications for Further ResearchThe changes that are currently taking place in

the relationship between Australian rural and distance education have a number of implications forfurther research. At present, a dominant characteristic of the relationship between rural and distance education is the gap separating developments in information and communication tech-nologies and their classroom applications. Tech-nological developments are ahead of educationalplanning and teacher education. While there aremany examples of ways in which distance is beingreduced in outback Australian schools throughthe use of new technologies, there is little in theresearch literature to guide teachers, teacher educators, and educat ional administrators in thechoice of appropriate technologies.There is little in the educational literature toguide the current development of inter-institutional teaching in rural communities, althoughthere have been some recent reports on this matte r in Australia (Cruise, 1991). The advent ofinter-institutional teaching has implications forpreservice and inservice teacher education, thedevelopment of curricula, and the assessment oflearning outcomes.

Research is needed regarding rural schools'application of information and communicationtechnologies in extending curriculum choice atsenior high school level, as well as in the assessment of learning outcomes in relation to urbanschools. The outcome of such research is l ikely toinfluence the extent to which Australian state andcommonwealth governments support the upgrading of technology in remote schools.As new technologies increasingly influencethe organisation of education in rural schools, it isappropriate that the requirements of particulargroups-girls, Aborigines, and children with speciallearning needs-be assessed in relation to itsintroduction.

Vocational choice and the issue of post yearten education has been a significant issue in Australian rural high school ed ucation (d'Plesse, 1993;Stevens, 1989; Stevens & Mason, 1992). In particular, the use of modems on rural school computersand the extent to which interactive distance education technology makes non-local worlds andoccupations "real" for isolated students requiresinvestigation. Longitudinal research is needed todetermine whether rural working class studentsin the future enter tertiary educational institutions and professional occupations in numbers

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tha t approx imate those of their urban counterparts.Little is known from rural parents ' and students' perspectives how, in qualitative terms, in-formation and communication technologies re-duce educat ional isolation. This informationwould be of value to all professionals involved inthe delivery of education in remote Australianlocations as well as to companies that sell technology. It is possible that increased use of technologymay actually increase educational isolation forsome rural students and their families if its application reduces teacher contact. Furthermore, theapplicationof increasingly sophisticated information and communication technologies in schoolsin small rural communities may contribute to theisolation of students from their parents who arenot introduced to either i ts use or made aware ofits educational and vocational potential.

New technologies in rural schools are unlikelyto be fu lly utilised unless attention is given to theprofessional development of teachers in their se-lection, application, and assessment in relation toteaching and learning. Research into the changing needs of the rural teaching profession, withparticular attention to these matters, would bevery timely. New technologies provide ways inwhich rural teachers can access professional development courses (Prain & Booth, 1993).

ConclusionChanges in communication technologies andin the nature of distance education can be ex-

pected to influence thedelivery of education withinrural Australian schools for the rest of this decade.Communication technologies can be assembled ina variety of ways to facilitate the delivery of education anywhere in the country. Of particularinterest to Australian rural educators is the advent of open learning in the tertiary sector. Thisprovides a model for the delivery of education innon-urban locations as well as a framework forinter-institutional cooperation, with many potential applications for rural schools.

Australian rural educators now face the taskof realising the educational potential of recenttechnological advances. This will require a re-assessment of the role of the teacher in rural schoolsand, indirectly, to the rural economy. Technologywill never replace the teacher in any classroom,but with careful planning and judicious use, it canprovide ways of enhancing rural education.


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ReferencesBarlow, A. H. . (1922). Queensland ParliamentaryPapers (Vol. 2; pp . 724-726). Brisbane: Gov

ernment Printer.Buckrell, P., Hamilton-Williams, R., McAulay, K.,

Prebble, T., & Rajasingham, L. (1992). Theuseof telecommunications technologies for the en-hancement of educational services. (Report forthe Department of the Prime Minister and.Cabinet).Wellington: Consultel Associates.

Commonwealth of Australia. (1989). An appleforthe teacher? Canberra: Australian Government Publication Service.

Cruise, R. J. (1991). A report on satellite education in the North-West of Victoria. Education. in Rural Australia, 1(2), 1-6.

Darnell, F. (1992). Adequacy and equity: Prerequisites to excellence in rural education. Educa-tion in Rural Australia, 2(2), 1-13.D'Cruz, J. V. (1990). Technology in education: Astudy of policy and practice in rural schools.

Melbourne: Ministry of Education.Department of Primary Industries and Energy.(1988). Education in ruralAustralia. Canberra:" Australian Government Publication Service.d'Plesse, P. (1993). Post year 10 reten tion : Thehuman angle. Education in RuralAustralia,3(1),1-6.H i g g i n s , ~ . ~ . (1993). Ruraldifference: A challengefor beginning teachers. Townsville: JamesCook

University of North Queensland, Rural Education Research and Development Centre.


Karmel, P. (1973). Schools in Australia. Canberra:Australian Government Publication Service.

Parker, E. B., Hudson, H. E., Dillman, D. A., &Roscoe, A. D. (1989). Rural America in theinformation age: Telecommunications policy forrural development. Lantham, MD: The AspenInstitute and University Press of America.

Prain, V., & Booth, T. (1993). Using interactivetelevision to deliver professional developmentprograms in rural Victoria. Education in RuralAustralia, 3(2),5-10.

Schools Commission. (1975). Report for the trien-nium 1976-1978. Canberra: Australian Government Publication Service.

Stevens, K. J. (1989). Career choices and rural futures in an isolated Queensland community.In D. T. Reeves (Ed.), Rural communities deter-mining theirfutures: Thequiet revolution (pp. 5061). Melbourne: Society for the Provision ofEducation in Rural Australia.

Stevens, K. J. (1991). Recent developments in ruraland dis tance education in New Zealand andtheir implications. New Zealand Annual Reviewof Education, 1, 160-172.

Stevens, K. J. (in press). Rural education: Policyand practice. In E. Hatton (Ed.), Understandingt e a c h i ~ g : Curriculum and the social context ofschooling, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Stevens, K. J., & Mason, G. A. (1992). Makingcareer choices in rural Western Australia. InC. Boylan (Ed.), Rural education: In pursuit ofexcellence. Armidale: Society for the Provisionof Education in Rural Australia.

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distance education for australian rural high schools

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