Frank Xiao

Shantou Radio & Television University (Open University)

This manifesto critically examines the unfolding integration of Generative AI (GenAI), chatbots, and algorithms into higher education, using a collective and thoughtful approach to navigate the future of teaching and learning. GenAI, while celebrated for its potential to personalize learning, enhance efficiency, and expand educational accessibility...

This manifesto critically examines the unfolding integration of Generative AI (GenAI), chatbots, and algorithms into higher education, using a collective and thoughtful approach to navigate the future of teaching and learning. GenAI, while celebrated for its potential to personalize learning, enhance efficiency, and expand educational accessibility...

This is the editorial of the inaugural issue of a new journal with an exclusive focus on macro and meso level research on open, distance, and digital education. https://ojs.uni-oldenburg.de/journals/ojs2/ojs/index.php/jodde/

Leveraging technology to break the iron triangle of access, cost, and quality is a legacy of open universities (OUs), becoming a source of inspiration for higher education in general. Today, OUs face increasing competition from conventional universities, no longer enjoying the first-mover advantages as they did in the earlier years. Can artificial...

The Theory of Transactional Distance (TDT) can be traced back to the early 1970s when Michael Grahame Moore was conceiving a theory for the emerging field of distance education. It was groundbreaking and disruptive in that it shed new light on non-contiguous teaching, that is, with the separation of teacher and learner in place and/or time. TDT has...

Digital transformation (DT) is a global trend in higher education. This study set out to examine the way DT is conceptualized in the 14th five-year development plans (2021-2025) of 56 top Chinese universities. Findings from the study show that Chinese universities have embarked on the DT journey with goals mostly similar to those pursued by their f...

The over-exaggeration of technology's role in education has dominated the landscape of research, often resulting in the negligence of other important issues. This article critiques openness in technology-based education from the perspective of sustainability, put more specifically, cost-effectiveness and accessibility, both of which have direct imp...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

https://inspired.oum.edu.my/issues/19/page-8.php

Despite its mainstreaming into the broader educational ecology, open and distance education (ODE) still leaves much to be desired in terms of both practice and research. Inspired and informed by the author's 35 years of experience as an ODE practitioner, researcher, reviewer, and editor, this article concentrates on 10 critical issues of ODE resear...

This chapter introduces Michael Grahame Moore (1938–), Distinguished Professor of Education (Emeritus) at the Pennsylvania State University and a globally-recognized founder of contemporary distance education (DE). The chapter traces what motivated Moore to be interested in DE in the first place and what informed his initial thinking. It then revie...

While ChatGPT has recently become very popular, AI has a long history and philosophy. This paper intends to explore the promises and pitfalls of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) AI and potentially future technologies by adopting a speculative methodology. Speculative future narratives with a specific focus on educational contexts are pr...

https://edtechbooks.org/oer_around_the_world

The Center for Open Education Research (COER) is an international research consortium, that was established in 2018 in order to increase international collaborative research projects, furthering innovation and understanding in open education, educational technology, lifelong learning, and international education. This book provides a cross-country...

A Declaration of Resignation as Associate Editor of Distance Education I hereby declare my resignation as Associate Editor (AE) of Distance Education (https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/cdie20). I have been working for the DE journal for a decade, first as a reviewer, later as an editorial board member, since 2014 as AE, and occasionally as an a...

Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education cannot be put into practice without considering institutional contexts, which differ not only globally but also within the same country. Each institutional context provides educators with opportunities or limitations where Open Educational Practices (OEP) and OER for teaching and learning are inv...

This study aims to investigate the trustworthiness of empirical research published in distance education (DE) journals, an area that has yet to be systematically explored. The review covers 238 empirical studies which were based on primary data and published in 2021 in eight DE journals listed in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) or Emerging Sou...

This introductory chapter explores the interrelationship and interplay between history, theory, and research in ODDE, demonstrating how they inform research and practice covered in the Handbook. It is argued that lack of historical knowledge about ODDE, unawareness of ODDE theories, and negligence of the abundant research literature on ODDE have co...

Distance Education in China (Issue 5, 2022) Table of Contents & Abstracts

Distance Education in China (Issue 4, 2022) Table of Contents & Abstracts

This paper explores faculty’s perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across diferent countries by conducting a multiple case study to fnd similarities and diferences between academics’ awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may inf...

Distance Education in China (Issue 1, 2022) Table of Contents & Abstracts

Distance Education in China (Issue 9, 2021) Table of Contents & Abstracts

Distance Education in China (Issue 10, 2021) Table of Contents & Abstracts

新冠肺炎大流行不但造成了生物意义上的后果，而且也产生了社会和教育意义上的影响。本文作者认为这场大流行病危机是人类历史上的一个转折点，其影响如此深远，可以被称为“大重启”，虽然其诸多后果仍然不为我们所了解。我们在转而采用应急远距离教育的过程中有过严重失策之举，比如模仿面对面教育、过度依赖数字使能实践和盲目相信数字解决方案。诸如此类的教育之“罪”有损教学效果，导致数字倦怠和疲劳，且进一步扩大数字鸿沟。本文还讨论了新冠肺炎大流行对后新冠时代世界的影响。在线全球化日趋显现，这意味着教育应该重新确定自己在这个变化中的世界的位置。在新常态下，数字学习生态系统在很多方面给我们带来希望，但是也要求我们谨慎处理隐私关切、监控和伦理等方面的问题。这场大流行病给我们带来的一点慰藉或许是使我们更好地认识到教育开放的...

Distance Education in China (Issue 8, 2021) Table of Contents & Abstracts

Distance Education in China (Issue 7, 2021) Table of Contents & Abstracts of Major Articles (in English)

Distance Education in China (Issue 6 2021) Table of Contents Abstracts of Major Articles in English

The new normal in education has been in the spotlight since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mainstream discourse is in favor of online education as the new normal during the pandemic crisis and even in the post-pandemic world. This reflection first examines education in its broad sense, i.e., in the context of the United Nations' 2030 ag...

Distance Education in China (Issue 5, 2021) Table of Contents & Abstracts of Major Articles (in English)

本文阐述高等教育背景下开放教育的内容。文章首先介绍开放教育的起源及其理论基础，随后根据远程开放学习研究的宏观、中观和微观层次框架讨论远程开放学习、开放教育实践、开放学术、开放教育资源、慕课、先前学习认定、学习者特征和开放教育国际化等主题的内容。最后从宏观、中观和微观层面提出今后的研究方向。

Distance Education in China (Issue 4, 2021) Table of Contents & Abstracts of Major Articles (in English)

This paper explores elements of open education within the context of higher education. After an introduction to the origins of open education and its theoretical foundations, the topics of open and distance learning, international education issues in open education, open educational practices and scholarship, open educational resources, MOOCs, prio...

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures-EduArc", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or (O)ER) framed...

Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study i...

Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study i...

This study examined how the role of digitalization is framed in the strategic development plans of 75 top universities in China. Findings show that digitalization as perceived by these universities features instrumentality (e-campus construction and application) and modernization (sustaining and efficiency innovations in teaching and learning), a s...

This reflection focuses on the position of distance education in today’s global higher education. Firstly, it identifies three types of convergence of distance and campus-based education – dual mode, add-on/blended, and full convergence – arguing that the last type has yet to be fully realized due to the complexities involved. It then critiques the...

ABSTRACT Interaction is a recurrent theme in the literature on distance education. Much of the research along these lines is dedicated to reciprocal interpersonal interaction, that is, learner–learner and learner–instructor interaction. But there is far less research interest in learner–content interaction despite its fundamental and critical role...

Much research has been conducted in the area of teacher professional identity in the past decades. Nonetheless, very little attention has been paid to the professional identity of tutors in distance education. Using interviews, this study set out to investigate distance tutors’ claimed and assigned professional identities, their actual, ought and i...

Research into motivation in education mainly centres on students’ learning motivation. This article reports on an interview study of teacher motivation with the aim of investigating the effects of student-related factors and tutors’ personal factors on the motivation of language tutors in the distance learning context. Findings from the study indic...

Learner agency plays a key role in self-regulated learning. Yet, there is a paucity of research into its role in the distance learning context. Using reflective narratives written by a distance learner of English in China, this longitudinal case study aims to investigate the ways in which learner agency mediates the language learning in the distanc...

Teachers’ influence on students’ learning motivation is a well-researched topic. Nevertheless, the majority of such studies are situated in the conventional learning context despite the rapid growth of distance language learning. This study set out to investigate tutors’ influence on students’ learning motivation in the Chinese distance language le...

Research on the good language learner in the conventional learning context has been high on the agenda of practitioners in the field of English as a second language/English as a foreign language since the mid-1970s. This study, however, focuses on the distance learning context with the aim of constructing an ‘affective’ profile of the successful di...

Foreign language teacher education is an extensively researched subject. Nevertheless, the research focus is on classroom teachers, despite the fact that distance language learning is burgeoning today. In the light of this, a survey was carried out among distance English language teaching (ELT) tutors at the Chinese radio and television universitie...

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been the focus of many studies into affect in classroom settings. However, the growing numbers of distance language learners worldwide in recent years calls for greater attention to be paid to this increasingly important constituency of language learners. Following on from Hurd’s investigation into FLA with distan...

To date, research into the role of affective variables in language learning has been conducted almost exclusively with learners in the classroom. However, the steady increase in the numbers of distance language learners worldwide calls for the research agenda to be extended to include this group of learners, given the specific characteristics and d...

English language teaching (ELT) has played an important role in the Chinese Radio and Television Universities (RTVU) network since its establishment in the late 1970s. Based on a literature review and reflection from an insider’s perspective, this paper gives a full account of the RTVU distance ELT model, examining how it supports autonomous anguag...

Researchers have adopted diverse perspectives on the effect of peer review on student writing in the field of teaching English as a First Language (E1L) and English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) in the past two decades. Nevertheless, researches have chiefly centered on conventional learning settings with on-campus students in mind; scant a...

Distance language learners require new kinds of skills, motivation and commitment to work effectively in a learning setting that is largely new and unfamiliar to them, and which is likely to have a direct impact on their development and use of learning strategies (Oxford & Burry Stock, 1995; White, 2004). This paper is based on a study of a group o...

Open and distance learning is experiencing rapid growth throughout the world. China in particular s undergoing a massive expansion of its distance EFL programmes. This global phenomenon challenges all those involved in delivering distance learning materials to examine current practice and the assumptions and expectations that underlie it, with part...

Web-based course assessment is a new thing at China’s Open University  China Radio and Television Universities (China RTVUs). This article reports an innovative pilot study in this research area. The experimental course for integrated web-based assessment in this study is Advanced English Writing, which is a compulsory course in the B.A. English p...