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ICDE Report•Research

Models for online, open, flexible and technology enhanced higher education across the globe – A comparative analysis

This study analyses how higher education providers across the world are harnessing digitalisation to improve teaching and learning and learner support, and to identify emerging types of practice.

Key findings

• Most higher education providers are just at the beginning of developing comprehensive strategies for harnessing digitalisation.
• There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to the implementation of technology and openness.
• Development of online, open, flexible and technology enhanced (OOFAT) types and models
• Next steps for more comprehensive OOFAT approaches for higher education institutions, policy-makers and researchers

Summary

Digital technology has become near ubiquitous in many countries today or is on a path to reach this state in the near future. These developments lead university and college leadership to the question of how they should position their institution. What type of digitalisation initiatives can be found practice beyond best practices and future potentials? This is the question that this study attempts to answer.

It sets out to analyse how higher education providers from across the world are harnessing digitalisation to improve teaching and learning and learner support and to identify emerging types of practice. For this, it focuses on the dimensions of flexibility of provision (in terms of time, place and pace) and openness of provision (in terms of who has access to learning and support and who is involved in the design of learning provision), as both of these dimensions can significantly benefit from integration of digital solutions.