Distance Learning – A Potential Opportunity for Thailand

Distance learning is a global phenomenon with a wide range of available courses; however concerns exist regarding both course quality and educational standards. Within Australia the further and higher education sectors are highly regulated by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and the Australian Skills Quality Authority respectively. All educational providers must meet the appropriate compliance requirements. The Open Universities Australia consortium is a group of eight Australian Universities. This consortium offers 44 undergraduate awards and 127 postgraduate awards; however they are predominantly in disciplines suitable for distance learning. The Engineering Institute of Technology offers a wide range of accredited distance learning courses but to people already in the workforce. Despite the widespread availability of eLearning tools such as mobile learning and well established instructional platforms within Thailand Online Distance Learning (ODL) is not well represented. In order to analyze potential barriers to this mode of learning a group of Thai university students attended a 1.5 hour lecture remotely and feedback was collected. The results clearly demonstrate that within this single cohort there was considerable interest in studying in a distance learning mode.