The second activity had various goals. First, it tried to introduce the notion that planning a policy process is not the same as developing a policy. This may seem obvious, but many policy development processes are characterized by poor planning. In other words, policy makers may think they are clear what policies they want (as the Minister in Activity One was), but have not worked out how the policy should be developed. This creates many problems:
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Poorly planned processes usually end up not working. |
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Lack of planning often results in useful people and organizations being left out of the process. As well being politically problematic, this often means that people who have experience and knowledge are not drawn into the process. When this is the case, the resulting policies do not reflect hard lessons that have already been learned and can easily be avoided. This is very wasteful |
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As a result of poor planning, many new policies are developed without reference to existing policies. Often, the result is that new policies are in tension with or contradict existing policies. Often adapting an existing policy is more effective than creating a new policy. |
Good planning can help to avoid these, and other, problems from arising. It seeks to ensure that policy makers are clear what steps they need to follow in creating a new policy, who needs to be involved, and whether or not existing policies require adaptation as part of the policy development process. The more thorough the planning, the more rigorous the ensuing policy development process will be and - ultimately - the better the resulting policies.
Core
readings 
At this point, we would like to encourage you to read the following document/s (if you have not already), which focus more on planning. We hope they will provide you some useful ideas that help you reflect on what you have just done during activity two.
Some of the documents you need to read for this activity are contained in a format called Portable Document Format (or PDF). In order to view these files, you need to have installed a piece of software called Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this software on your computer, we have placed it on the CD for you to be able to install. You can read more aobut how to do this by viewing our Help Files on Adobe Acrobat Reader.
PDF Vision, Values, Purpose (or Mission), Goals (Extract from the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook)Project Management (article prepared by LCPowers.com)
We would also like to suggest that you read a critique of educational technology policies developed in Southern Africa. Although the focus is slightly different from distance education, many of the issues are very relevant.
Possible
additional readings
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 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 reflects on what distance education is and how national policies can improve the quality of distance education practices.
