Generations of Distance Education and Challenges of Distance Education Institutions in Japanese Higher Education

Abstract

Distance education has often been discussed in terms of generations as its forms and methods have been evolved over years. Most often, generations of distance education has been discussed in terms of the dominant technologies it utilizes in teaching and learning. There has been another attempt to classify distance education into generations in terms of its dominant pedagogy. This paper proposes the discussion of distance education in terms of its organizational structure, and proposes a new organizational structure for distance education in which a division of labor can be observed across institutions.