DE- Major issues and challenges by Najib Kofani and Nowduri Srinivas

The paper classified 3 major practical issues that distance learning system (DLS):

1. Seperation of instructor and learner
2. Use of educational media to carry course content
3. Provision of two-way communication between instructor and learner

Prominent issues outlined in the paper are based on the following questions:

1. What is different about teaching at a distance?
2. What are the reasons for teaching at a distance?
3. What are the different ways to improve planning and organisation of DLS?
4. What are the different ways to meet students' needs?
5. What are the guidelines on teaching skills?
6. What are the different methods for improving interaction and feedback?

Four challenging initiatives and required recommendations:

1. Make the university management support as wide as possible.
   
2. Special attention towards the course that have a rich job market.
3. Take a noble look towards the far- reaching academic courses.
4. Establish an attractive faculty/quality programmes for the university staffs

Recommendations to achieve the above target:

1. Improve the organizational (design), financial (productivity) and the physical structure(architecture) of the DLS.
2. Provide high quality student service.
3. Broaden the faculty reward system.

The paper proposed the following factors for an effective DLS:

1. The quality of course materials.
2. The quality of the instructor.
3. The quality of the students.
4. The quality and frequency of the interaction.
5. The quality of curricula preparations, assignments and solutions.

The paper presented a case study, comparing the five aspects of DLS in three universities.

Table: Comparative study among the several DLS

Nature of Functionality	The Technical University of Milano, Italy	Indiana University USA	Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
1. System Philosophy	Easily adoptable to the students with easy student/teacher interaction	Concern more towards establishing higher education and interaction with the software industry	Concern more towards engineering education with different curricula flexibility
2. System Architecture	Simulate the classroom scenario based on intercampus network	Integrate distributed education into mainstream of teaching with a robust design structure.
3. System Evaluation	Reduces teacher-student interaction as little as possible.	More of faculty driven	Comprehensive and flexible framework
4. Programs/Courses currently offered.	Lessons, seminars and tutoring along with graduates and below	Graduates and under graduates	Engineering education courses
5. Number of faculty and participants involved	Several thousands of students per faculty	Fixed number of students per faculty	Quality conscious with flexibility and adoptability