卷首语

Preface

正像全球掀起的信息化浪潮深刻地改变着整个世界的经济、社会结构一样,多媒体技术的发展,正给传统教育巨大的冲击,远程开放教育以崭新的形式,迅速改变着教育的形态,铺设通往终身学习体系的桥梁。

As the waves of the information age are bringing a deepgoing change to the world economy and structures of the society, the development in the multi-media techniques is giving a great impact to the conventional education. Distance education, building up a bridge that leads to life-long learning, is quickly changing the mode of education with its new paradigm.The unevenness of the economic developments as well as cultural differences characterizes distance education of different countries. From different angles, scholars and experts in distance education all over the world have studied, disussed and exploited the theoretical guidance and the practical modes in this field. There are different views and different ways. The future development in distance education will benefit from these discussions. Analyses and comparisons between countries with different economies and culture will help us avoid regional limitation, complement each other in cognition and learn from each other in practice.Based on these considerations, having sought contributions in a much wider range, in the hope that we might be able to promote further development world wide in distance education by offering our readers information in different angles from different regions, the editorial board of this journal and the Distance Education the Centre for Research in Distance & Adult Learning at the Open University of Hong Kong publish this Special issue.The co-compiling itself emblems the friendly relationship and corporation between the the Open University of Hong Kong and Shanghai TV University. It shows the good wishes of the scholars in distance e-ducation from different countries and regions for offering everybody better conditions by distance and open learning to build up a better world for human beings.In today's world which is still full of endless dissentions and disputes, friendship, corporation, understanding and exchanging of ideas go far beyond the sphere of education.