South korea—commentary

Abstract

The development of DE and proliferation of e-learning would not have been possible without the vision and funding provided by Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. It also owes much to the efforts of the universities and DE researchers and practitioners. For example, the Institute of Distance Education at KNOU which was founded in 1977 and the centers for teaching and learning that were established from 2003 onwards in all traditional and cyber universities as a consequence of these government interventions hired professionally trained instructional designers, e-facilitators and researchers to assist in developing, delivering and evaluating their DE courses and programs. Again, as a consequence of government policy, Korea has many DE researchers and developers who have majored in instructional design and technology at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, many doing so overseas. These professionals have contributed greatly to the rapid growth and quality improvement of DE and have also persuaded the government to include quality of ‘instructional design effort’ as an important criterion in the evaluation of all cyber and traditional universities and KNOU.