An evaluation of selected Bangladesh Open University open and distance education materials: Towards developing principles for open and distance education in Bangladesh

The use of open learning systems for the provision of higher education continues to grow and evolve around the world. The diversity of open learning systems that now exist reflects the ability to adapt this form of education to meet the higher education needs of individuals in a range of contexts including cultural, political, and economic contexts.

This thesis examines the provision of open and distance education in Bangladesh which has a population of 120 million and where higher education has been mainly available through eleven conventional universities. Until recently these universities were only able to access 5% people of the country and were unable to cater to the growing needs for higher education of the increasing population, particularly those people not living in large cities. In order to overcome the low participation in higher education, the Bangladesh Open University (BOU) was established in 1992 to help to meet the country's increasing need for higher education and vocational training using open and distance teaching mode.

The approach to materials design and course delivery by the BOU endeavours to accommodate the cultural, economic and student learning contexts that prevail in Bangladesh. This thesis describes this approach through an evaluation of the open and distance education materials used in one unit of the Bachelor of Education (BEd) program and one unit of the Diploma in Management (DIM) at the BOU.

Three broad criteria for evaluating the selected BOU materials were: learner support structure, learning resources and learning systems. The criteria were derived from a comparative study of open and distance education that exists in developed and developing countries. Final conclusions were made after evaluating the selected materials from BOU using these criteria.

The curriculum evaluation methodology by Stufflebeam (1985) and Dogan (1989) was used for assessing open and distance education materials.

Findings indicate that the text materials of the BOU should be changed and be prepared according to the social, cultural, economic, and education contexts of Bangladesh. For instance, printed text materials should have pretest questions, concept maps, specific objectives, illustrations within the content, exercises and questions, assignments, quotations, footnotes, and references. At the same time, in addition to text materials, support services should be re -arranged in accordance with access issues and cultural perspectives.