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Online and Distance Education for a Connected World

Learning at a distance and learning online are growing in scale and importance in higher education, presenting opportunities for large scale, inclusive, flexible and engaging learning. These modes of learning swept the world in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The many challenges of providing effective education online and remotely have been acknowledged, particularly by those who rapidly jumped into online and distance education during the crisis.

This volume, edited by the University of London’s Centre for Online and Distance Education, addresses the practice and theory of online and distance education, building on knowledge and expertise developed in the University over some 150 years. The University is currently providing distance transnational education to around 50,000 students in more than 180 countries around the world. Throughout the book, contributors explore important principles and highlight successful practices in areas including course design and pedagogy, online assessment, open education, inclusive practice, and enabling student voice. Case studies illustrate prominent issues and approaches. Together, the chapters offer current and future leaders and practitioners a practical, productive, practice- and theory-informed account of the present and likely future state of online and distance higher education worldwide.

Teaching Literacies in Diverse Contexts

Literacy education can take place in many locations and periods across the lifespan. Literacy educators require flexibility and a deep toolbox to meet their students’ diverse needs, regardless of whether they work in traditional school and college settings or in other environments with varied populations. Teaching Literacy in Diverse Contexts shows how practical experiences can be used in creative ways to support educator development for teaching literacy in a global context.

Mentorship between a developing literacy
educator and an experienced teacher educator is central to the book, and to the
practical experiences in training or professional development that it focuses
on. Chapters share the creative solutions discovered during mentorship that supported
developing literacy educators to teach with authenticity in a number of
contexts, including the adult learning sector, a rural community in Africa and alongside
parents of very sick children. The authors demonstrate how this can be done in
a sensitive and culturally relevant manner by parents, volunteers and teachers
with varying degrees of experience in both formal and informal spaces.
Together, the chapters build a crucial resource for preparing a broad range of
literacy educators to teach literacy in many contexts where policy on how best
to teach reading and writing to diverse student bodies ebbs and flows.

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