Glossary of Open and Distance Learning

Access centres: see learning centres.

Accountability: holding operating personnel responsible for the estimated costs in their budgets and for expenditures.

Accounts payable: the money you owe to providers of services or products.

Accounts receivable: the money owed to you for services rendered or products sold.

Action verbs: in writing learning objectives, verbs that state expectations of learner behaviour as an action to be performed, which learners and teachers can evaluate as having been performed.

Activities approach: a way of designing learning materials that provides a series of activities to help learners master content, on the assumption that learners will only learn if they actively engage with the material presented.

Administrator: the person who carries out administrative duties on behalf of the development team, liaises with contract writers, assists with copyright clearance, compiles readings and illustrations, ensures production schedules are met, and controls the day-to-day progress of the course.

Adult education: teaching and learning that emphasises the principles of adult learning, often known as andragogy, as compared to pedagogy, or child-centred learning.

Advance organisers: paragraphs at the beginning of a unit or lesson that are intended to remind learners of what they have already learned, to connect it with what they will learn in this lesson.

Affective domain: in teaching and learning contexts, the domain field of activities relating to feelings or emotions.

Aim: in the context of teaching and learning, a broad, general statement of either what the learner might learn or what the teacher will do.

Analysis: a level of learning that involves breaking down material into its meaningful parts so that the relationship among the parts can be determined.

Analytical approach: an approach to designing a curriculum, for example, which examines the components of that curriculum — such as the learning objectives, key concepts, or the competencies that are desired as outcomes — and organises the curriculum around them.

Ancillary operations: activities that fall outside the core activities of an organisation.

Andragogy: see adult education.

Application: a level of learning that involves using knowledge in concrete situations.

Apportioning: the act of assigning fractions of the cost of a shared facility or service to cost centres.

Assessment: the measurement of a learner’s performance in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Asynchronous: see networked learning.

Audio conference: a technological arrangement in which telephones or speakerphones are connected so that people in three or more places can talk to one another.

Audiographic conference: a technological arrangement in which audio conferencing is supplemented by devices that send text or still pictures, such as computers, electronic whiteboards, graphics tablets, and light pens for writing to computer screens, tablets, and whiteboards.

Basic education: the provision of teaching and learning opportunities that enable learners to obtain primary-level skills in reading, writing, and numeracy, so that they can participate fully in society.

Behavioural objectives: learning objectives that indicate the expected changes of behaviour in learners who complete a course of instruction.

Bimodal institution: see dual-mode institution.

Broadcast: any transmitted radio or television programme.

Budgeting: a process consisting of a series of steps by which estimates of revenue and expenses and related statistical data are used to compile a plan for expenditure for the next financial period.

Bulletin board system: a small computer system that allows members to exchange messages, maintain discussion groups, and download software.

Cable feed: broadcast material sent via a fixed cable or a community antenna.

Capital budget: money set aside on a recurring basis to meet capital expenditure.

Capital cost: expenditure on the acquisition of fixed assets (land, buildings, machinery, equipment), in which the expenditure is intended to benefit more than one accounting period.

cd-rom (compact disc–read only memory): a disc that can store a large amount of text, audio, video, and graphic information; a computer needs a special drive and software to display these materials.

Cloze test: a test of reading and comprehension skill that involves the insertion or deletion of appropriate words in a text.

Co-production: the joint production of a course or courses by two or more institutions.

Cognitive domain: in the context of teaching and learning, the domain of learning activities that relate to perceiving the world and knowing about it or understanding it; this domain contains six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Comprehension: a level of learning that involves grasping the meaning of material or restating previously learned material in one’s own words.