The first activity was intended as an 'icebreaker'. We hope you found it challenging and   enjoyable.

In creating a fictitious scenario, we tried to allow you the opportunity to think through the relationship between policy and implementing distance education. Although the scenario was fictitious, it may have struck a chord with many of you, as this type of 'vision' is increasingly being favoured in the developing world. Our intention in this activity was to encourage you - first, individually and then as a group - to start considering what policy visions are realistic in your countries. We also wanted you to begin to exchange ideas about distance education and policy with peers from other countries in Southern Africa.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will hopefully be able reflect in much more detail how policy processes actually work and how they are planned. We intend to do this in a practical way by asking you to try doing activities and then sharing the results of these with your peers. Some of these activities will build on the fictitious scenario that was introduced in the first activity, so please continue to think about what policies are relevant in your country. We will also start to examine more closely what is meant by the term 'distance education' itself, hopefully helping to challenge some traditional notions of the term and - by working together - re-inventing distance education in ways that are most relevant to countries in Southern Africa.

Remember as you proceed that there are no 'right' answers to the issues we will grapple with over the next few months, only different ways of doing things for different contexts. So, don't worry about trying to complete activities before reading about a topic. The best way to learn is to try to do something yourself first.

 Possible additional readings 

  At this point, you may be interested in starting to browse through some one or two national case studies, in order to get some sense of how different countries are approaching the problem of developing relevant policies. A full list of case studies stored on this CD is available here.

 Proceeding with the course 

When you are ready, click here to proceed to the next activity, which explores the process of making policy.