To read more about the purpose of this activity, click here.

 The task 

The plans you have prepared to develop a national policy are now in place and under way, with you at the helm of the planning process. Prematurely, though, your Minister of Education reported on the project to the national Cabinet, thus significantly raising public awareness about the project. The Minister is pleased to be able to inform you that she/he has received responses from other key government Ministries to this presentation, one from the Ministry of Tourism and one from the Ministry of Communication. 

The Minister is keen to get an update from you on progress that has been made in the process, so that s/he can prepare a response to these two Ministries on the direction of the policy process. Her/his specific requirements are contained in another Ministerial communiqué. You are required to prepare a brief response of approximately 2 pages to this communiqué. 

 What you should read 

  To help you with this activity, we have placed some examples of national approaches to distance education policy on the CD. We suggest you browse through at least two to three examples of these, selecting from the list of options available to you. We have prepared a list of national policies/approaches from which you can select.

At this point, you might also like to read Manthoto Lephoto's description of distance education in Lesotho or Judith Kamau's article on distance education in Botswana.

 What you need to do 

1. Click on this link to view the Minister's communiqué. When you click on this link a new window of your web browser will open. In this way, you can keep the communiqué open, and refer to this activity page at the same time. 
2. Click on this link to view the Minister of Communication's letter. When you click on this link a new window of your web browser will again open. 
3. Click on this link to view the Minister of Tourism's letter. When you click on this link a new window of your web browser will again open. 
4. We suggest that you read through some examples of national policies as proposed above, as these will give you an idea of what has been done in some other countries. Remember, though, that these are not 'good' or 'bad' policies, simply examples of what has been done in some other countries.
5. Prepare your response to the Minister's communiqué. To assist you in completing this task, we have prepared an activity template in Microsoft Word that you can use to complete your answers. Once you have completed this document, save it in an appropriate location on your computer.
6. Attach your response to an e-mail to your group of peers. Click here to send an e-mail to the group with your response to this activity. Add any comments in the mail that you think are necessary to explain further the submission you have prepared. When you have completed your mail, send it to the group. 
7. At this time, you should start receiving the responses of other members of the group. When you look through these responses, you might like to consider the following questions: Why do you think other people responded as they did? Do you agree with their responses? What do you think is good about their inputs? Where you do not agree, is this because you think their ideas are unsuitable in your country or in their own country?  Your online mentor will also ask you further questions based on the inputs from the group. At any point, you can share any of your responses to these questions or any other observations with the rest of the group, either by pressing the Reply button on the e-mail or by clicking on this link (Share further comments on activity three with the group). 

 Estimated time 

We expect that this activity should take between 6 to 8 hours. We suggest you think of spending your time as follows (but remember this is only a guide):

1. Conducting preliminary readings is likely to take you 1 - 2 hours.
2. Reading the Minister's communiqué and the letters from other Ministries thoroughly should take about 25 minutes.
3. Preparing your response to the Minister's communiqué will take between 3 - 4 hours.
4. Reading other people's responses and participating in ongoing discussions will last another 2 - 3 hours in total.

 On completion 

  Before proceeding to the final activity, we suggest that you read a brief reflection on activity three. This will hopefully help to contextualize what you have done within the overall course. In addition, there are some additional readings and activities that we would like you to work through.