David Garza's understanding of
Lesson 13 - Best Practices and Future Directions

The future has already happened for many on-line instructional programs because of the tremendous break troughs in the communication technologies. There are more than 100,000 courses available from accredited universities around the world, offering over 100 full degrees and over 50 post-graduate programs. The Open University, Britain's largest university, has an enrollment of 200,000 distance students, of which 132,000 are taking undergraduate courses. The University of South Africa, the oldest and largest university in South Africa, has an enrollment of 130,000 distance students. The University of Phoenix reports an online enrollment of 49,000 students. Companies like McDonalds, Disney, Wal-Mart, Federal Express, and Motorola have also been very successful providing business related instruction at a distance to its' employees. Distance education universities like the highly successful on-line Western Governors University are signing agreements with worldwide distance education like the British Open University and China to provide a wider assortment of courses and degree programs. Internet and Web-based instruction is appreciated because of its flexibility. Students that have busy schedules and complicated lifestyles appreciate these highly flexible courses because they can be accessed the courses anytime, anywhere, by anyone, on any topic and from any device (the five "Any's"). Successful providers of on-line instruction like the Mega Universities in England and China have become very heavily reliant on distance education. Some major concerns for these on-line universities and corporations are intellectual property rights and accreditation of courses. Distance education institutions like the University of Phoenix have become businesses and have become very profitable. Once the distance education infrastructure is created and maintained, the distance education programs usually become very profitable and cost effective. Distance education is intended for those students that can't physically attend regular classrooms and is not intended to replace current face-to-face instructional methods. Which method is better? Well, empirical research recently has continually supported the fact that distance learners perform as well, if not better, than their traditional classroom counterparts.