We have continued to pursue the fictitious scenario of the national distance education policy process in this activity as far as one can take such an exercise in a course like this. Again, we hope you found it challenging and interesting. In completing this final activity, we wanted you to start thinking about how to present your ideas to interested parties in your country. We also very much hope that the work you have done will now not simply be hypothetical. On the contrary, our hope is that the discussion document you have prepared through this activity might now be something you could share with colleagues in your country. Maybe it is even something that will start to influence the direction of policy in your country. Maybe you could start thinking about who else to share your ideas with in this regard.

For those of you who are interested, we have included the course curriculum framework document we created on this CD. You might be interested to browse through this to get more information on the thinking that went into the design of this course. It is available either as a Word Document or as a PDF File.

Wrapping up the course 

Completion of activity four brings us to the end of the formal component of our course. We really hope that you have enjoyed the work you have done so far, as well the opportunities you have had to engage with peers from around Southern Africa.

Of course, this ending represents the beginning of a new journey. We have only really focused on developing policy, not so much on policy implementation. This presents a whole new series of challenges. However, we also hope that you will not see this 'ending' as the end of our discussion. The e-mail list we have set up will continue to run, and so we would very much encourage you to continue sharing thoughts and ideas with the colleagues you have met on this course. By building a network of people around Southern Africa, we can only improve the quality and scale of education delivery in the region. By sharing ideas and learning from the experiences and insights of others, we can make our own jobs easier and more rewarding.

We look forward to staying in touch with all of you as you continue your important work in Southern Africa!!