| Single institutions and governments will continue to play a vital part in distance
education. But with the growing potential, availability, and use of Internet technologies,
the development of distance education is becoming an increasingly international affair.
Distance education institutions have been among the leaders in developing and implementing
schemes for institutional collaboration, often across national borders, and the trend
toward such collaboration seems likely to accelerate. At the same time governments,
particularly those in developing countries, have begun to encourage their institutions to
enter into collaborative arrangements, as they recognize the possibilities of distance
education as a mechanism for national and regional development. Further contributing to
the trend of globalization has been the growing involvement of international agencies in
the development of distance education systems, particularly in developing countries.
But internationalization raises some complicated issues, and distance educators and
policymakers have had to review and modify their practices. In doing so, they need to know
what problems other institutions and agencies have faced in confronting these issues. And
they need to address questions such as these:
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