The Coadunation of Distance Education and New Communications Technologies: the New Zealand Technical Correspondence Institute a Case Study

Abstract

Educationists, policy makers and researchers have stressed that the future of New Zealand depends on an expanded skilled workforce and they express concern that the current education system is failing to provide the dimension and quality of workforce that will be required for sustained economic growth in the 21st century. What appears to be needed is effective cost-efficient instruction that can match the needs for skills related to technological change, delivered at the convenience of the learner. This is distance education. Distance education has a symbiotic relationship with communications technologies. This study examines the coadunation of distance education and new communications technologies using the New Zealand Technical Correspondence Institute (TCI) as a case study. The TCI, offering tertiary vocational education by correspondence, is a representative New Zealand distance education institution, with a long and successful history functioning on the conventional postal. However, the New Zealand postal system is undergoing significant changes. At the same time, beginning in 1988, The Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Limited is implementing Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). In the context of the expanding need for distance education and the rapid introduction of new communications technologies such as ISDN, this study explores the communications options available to the TCI in order to respond to the country's needs as effectively in the future as it has in the past. The implications of such new communications technologies are studied in detail in relation to Scenarios in which ISDN is the critical technology. This study identifies for New Zealand and possibly for other countries, the implications emanating from the coadunation of distance education and new communications technologies, such as ISDN. This study concludes that for distance education to provide effective instruction in terms of scope and depth for New Zealand's needs, distance education would need to coadunate with the new communications technologies. A study of the new communications technologies suggests that for New Zealand, ISDN is a megatechnology that could prove to offer the most convenient, effective and cost-efficient method for learners, and allow distance education, hitherto regarded as a peripheral activity, to become instead the core enterprise of education.