Parents whose autistic1 child’s needs are not met within mainstream schooling may seek alternative modes of education, such as home or distance education. There is a paucity of research on the delivery of home or distance education programs for autistic students. This study reports on the experiences of parents, students and teachers in the inaugural year of Australia’s first hybrid distance education program (distance education with parent/carers as supervisors) specifically designed for autistic students. Interviews with eight parents, four students and two teachers gathered their perceptions of the program’s benefits, challenges and suggestions for improvements. All parents, students and teachers reported positive overall perceptions of and experiences in the program, and a range of outcomes for students and parents. Flexibility was identified as a key benefit of the program. Challenges identified included a lack of opportunities for students’ social interactions and the effort required of parents to support their child’s participation. Additional longitudinal research is needed to determine the long-term impact of programs of this type and to evaluate strategies for increasing student independence.

The use of videoconferencing technology to support the delivery of language programs shows great potential in regional and rural settings where a lack of access to specialist teachers limits equitable access to education. In this article, we investigate the establishment of two regional and rural primary school networks in Australia for videoconferenced language learning. Adopting a perspective taken from the discipline of information systems called structuration theory, we examine how the technology they use both changes and is changed by its use in language learning, and how schools and teachers take control of technology and adapt their educational approaches. Case studies were carried out on the two networks using multiple data sources, including interviews and observation of language classes. The findings reveal that even with the same conceptual foundations and aims, divergent models of practice emerge as sustainable adaptations to localised factors. These differences are shaped by, among other things, an interplay between the quality of infrastructure, prior knowledge, and the “material properties” of the technology, including its functions, limits, and deployment in physical space. A closer look at these practices illustrates limitations and possibilities specifically for language education, but also more broadly illustrates how the success of these videoconferencing initiatives are influenced by a nuanced combination of social, educational, and technological factors.

Given the need to provide increased opportunities for busy managers to learn, but their reduced availability to attend formal on-campus classes, management students and corporate employers have turned to Distance Education (DE) provision as an alternative to face-to-face (FtF) programmes.

Providing flexible delivery, however, does not guarantee that the learning requirements of management students will be met, and needs to be considered in terms of the limits and enhancements to learning that different flexible methodologies support. DE comes in many forms and pedagogics, uses a variety of media, and tends to be designed with the individual learner in mind, whereas the demand for work-relevant management skills requires Management Education (ME) programmes to include collaborative as well as individual modes of learning.

Managers require integrative knowledge, emotional intelligence, and complex social and perceptual skills and attitudes that increasingly reflect ethical and values-oriented behaviour. At issue in the shift from FtF to DE is the need to provide opportunities for the ongoing social and interpersonal skills development that would normally occur within the classroom. For DE to add value to management learners it needs to offer flexibility that supports quality work-relevant education.

In this paper the author explores whether print-based DE combined with Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies provides a solution. CMC is a networked electronic medium; used in conjunction with print-based DE it can provide opportunities for group interactivity and collaborative learning. Since the skills required for effective CMC participation are also synergistic with the socio-cultural and technical skills required of today's ‘networked manager’, the author suggests that there are further advantages to including CMC as part of the ME curriculum. From a review of the literature, the author concludes that there is much benefit in combining the two methodologies provided that:

• appropriate pedagogy is designed into the combined media

• the flexibility and educational needs of management learners are met

• educators and learners learn how to learn by the new media.

Four years of televising a university course for delivery to an audience of agricultural producers provides some reflections on the feasibility of combining traditional classroom instruction with in-depth extension educational programs. There are a sizable number of active agricultural producers who are eager to study academic topics in greater depth than could be obtained in traditional workshops or seminars. It seems possible to overcome many obstacles that earlier suggested distance education via television was not feasible from an administrative, budgetary or client acceptance point of view. The results seem worth the effort, with the providing institution benefiting from increased national recognition.

Undergraduate Food and Resource Economics majors and those with different majors were surveyed to determine the perceived advantages and disadvantages of distance and online education courses from a student perspective. Specific objectives included determining if students who have been exposed to more online courses are more likely to rate online education as positive or negative relative to the traditional classroom setting. In general, Food and Resource Economics majors tended to view distance and online education courses less favorably than did the others.

Heads of agricultural economics and agribusiness departments across the United States are surveyed to develop an inventory of distance education (DE) offerings by their departments. Perceived challenges, strategies for use, and future plans for DE are assessed. While the majority of the responding departments offer DE, the department heads believed that faculty time costs to develop/deliver DE are high relative to traditional delivery and that both strategic plans for implementing DE and financial incentives for faculty to adopt DE are lacking. The department heads did, however, have positive views about the technological ability of students to use distance courses.

Distance education students are confronted with a range of additional challenges as part of their tertiary study experience. A quantitative approach was used to identify the challenges they face, their relative levels of satisfaction, coping strategies, and academic performance. Two hundred and ninety-five students (64 male and 231 female) participated by completing a survey that included measures of satisfaction, stress, coping, and academic performance. All were enrolled in an Australian university and studied either on campus or in one of two distance education (DE) modes, off-campus and offshore. While there were some differences in satisfaction expressed between DE and on-campus students, there were no significant differences between the groups on measures of stress or academic performance. The differences between the three groups’ use of coping strategies was less clear. Possible explanations for the differences between the groups are discussed.

Improving public awareness through education has been recognized widely as a basis for reducing the risk of disasters. Some of the first disaster just-in-time (JIT) education modules were built within 3–6 days after the south Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Bam, Pakistan, and Indonesia earthquakes through a Supercourse. Web monitoring showed that visitors represented a wide spectrum of disciplines and educational levels from 120 developed and developing countries. Building disaster networks using an educational strategy seizes the opportunity of increased public interest to teach and find national and global expertise in hazard and risk information. To be effective, an expert network and a template for the delivery of JIT education must be prepared before an event occurs, focusing on developing core materials that could be customized rapidly, and then be based on the information received from a recent disaster. The recyclable process of the materials would help to improve the quality of the teaching, and decrease the time required for preparation. The core materials can be prepared for disasters resulting from events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, and bioterrorism.

This paper presents an overview of distance education at university level and some of the associated challenges and pitfalls.

The Bugscope project is an educational outreach program for kindergarten to grade 12 (K–12) classrooms. The project provides a resource to classrooms so that they may remotely operate a scanning electron microscope to image insects at high magnification. The microscope is remotely controlled in real time from a classroom computer over the Internet using a Web browser. Bugscope provides a state-of-the-art microscope resource for teachers that can be readily integrated into classroom activities. The Bugscope project provides a low-cost, sustainable model for research groups to support K–12 education outreach projects.