We have again pursued the fictitious scenario of the national distance education policy process in this activity. We hope you found it challenging and interesting. The intention of this activity was to encourage you to consider ways in which policy interventions can be used to improve the quality of distance education in your country. As you may have noticed, it is possible to approach this challenge in different ways:

	Some countries have developed no policies on distance education at all.
	Some countries integrate distance education into broader, general policies on education. Sometimes this    happens because policy makers do not really see distance education as important enough to justify its own policies. In other cases, it is because policy makers want to ensure that distance education is governed by the same rules and regulations as all education.
	Some countries develop specific policies and laws on distance education. This most typically happens when countries want to establish new institutions, either to function as dedicated distance education institutions or to govern national distance education practices. However, in some cases, the policies developed are not this formal, but rather take the form of frameworks or guidelines produced to direct the development of distance education and ensure quality of distance education practices.

You may find it useful to spend more time reading through different national examples of distance education policies. As importantly, looking through case studies of distance education delivery in different countries may help you to generate new ideas on what kinds of policies might make sense for you. 

At this stage some lessons emerging from the work we have done together are:

• There is no 'right' answer to developing education policies. Different contexts demand different approaches. Through the fictitious scenarios we have required you to work through in activities one to three, we have tried to stimulate you to think through what policies you think make sense for your country.
• Any process for developing policies of any kind needs careful planning. The process of developing education policies is often as important as the final policy itself. The same policy can be achieved in many different ways. We may often think we have the solution to a problem but if the policies we put together to implement these solutions do not engage all those people on whom we will depend for implementation, the policy is more likely to fail than to succeed.
• Despite the above, it is important to remember that policy processes are, above all, political processes. Often new political imperatives can change a situation overnight, removing commitment to one policy direction and forcing a new one. The key point for policy makers to remember, though, is to stay true to the process of developing relevant policies, not to become diverted by the shifting sands of politics (over which we, more often than not, have little control). For this reason, developing clear and concrete visions is very important, as the clearer the vision is the less easily it can be shifted by the vagaries of politics.  

 Additional readings 

  With this introduction in place, we are going to be turning our attention in more detail to the concept of distance education itself. We have deliberately avoided this detailed exploration until now, as we wanted the course's point of departure to be the policy process, not distance education itself, as this reflects the reality for most policy makers.

You may already feel quite confident that you already understand distance education well, or you may feel that it is still new territory for you. We suggest, therefore that you take some time to look through a Handbook put together by the Commonwealth of Learning called An Overview of Open and Distance Learning. Browse through it briefly, and assess whether or not you think you are already familiar with its content. If you are not, we would like to suggest that you start working your way through this valuable resource. 

In addition, though, we would like you to read a paper developed by SAIDE on the Concept of Open Learning. this paper introduces some interesting distinctions between distance education and open learning that we think might help you to reflect further on the work you have done to date. We will be assuming that everyone will have read this paper before the workshop begins.

You may also be interested to spend some time browsing through the World Bank Global Distance Education Network.

 Proceeding with the course 

Having completed these activities, we now turn our attention to the final activity of the course.