Introducing IRRODL's Regional Editors: Building the pathway to a global village of open and distance Education literature

Terry Anderson,Paula Smith

doi:10.19173/irrodl.v6i2.240

Abstract

Introducing IRRODL's Regional Editors: Building the pathway to a global village of open and distance Education literature

Highlights

Is distance education multi-layered and complex, life itself is multi-layered and complex – contextualized by politics, economics, and culture
The challenge of running an international journal was made apparent during a recent IRRODL editorial meeting, IRRODL’s founding editor, Peter Cookson, offered sage advice when one editorial team member suggested that the content we are publishing is designed to help those developing countries, help themselves
Peter’s comment rang true in this discussion and is critically relevant to IRRODL’s future. It made us think about basic communication theory as applied to the dissemination of ODL literature via open access publishing vehicles, such as IRRODL

Summary

Editorial Anderson and Smith

For those of you who have read Bias, you will see the seeds of McLuhan’s groundbreaking communications theory that, to this day, hold implications for all disciplines, including Distance Education. The purpose of IRRODL’s Regional Editor Team structure was made clear during the 2005 Canadian Association of Distance Educators (CADE) conference in Vancouver Canada, wherein the Commonwealth of Learning sponsored several delegates from South Africa, Zambia, Namibia, and Ghana These scholars and practitioners presented papers on topics that many of us living, working, and researching in developed countries have certainly heard about, but rarely – if ever – have personally had to deal with. If one is teaching basic literacy skills to villagers from under a large, shady tree, it is perhaps not too much of a technological fantasy to imagine these students accessing content and interacting with others via mobile cell phone technology under that tree? But regardless of the media, IRRODL’s content must be relevant to the audience for which it is intended on a region-by-region basis – whether it is disseminating literature on qualitative content analysis, a comparative analysis of asynchronous and synchronous distance delivery, exploring the emerging role of m-learning, or teaching basic literacy via radio to students under a tree

Introducing Cider Notes

The Main Section

Book Notes

Technical Notes