远程教育的变迁：新技术与成本结构变化*

托马斯·赫尔斯曼

（奥登堡大学 远程教育中心，德国）

【摘要】本文将首先回顾远程教育的经典定义及基本理论，如Otto Peters的远程教育工业化理论等。这类经典远程教育的实践代表首推广泛使用印刷和广播技术的英国开放大学。传统的远程教育成本效益分析，是基于媒体无差异论的假设和规模经济潜能而展开的。媒体无差异论的假说使得远程教育的成本效益分析很大程度上变成了成本分析。成本分析可以构建各种远程教学的成本结构，并基于成本因子进行数学建模。

早期的开放与远程学习最突出的缺点是师生交互的困难。新的数字技术在这个方面可以实现两种不同的应用：一种更加类似于传统的面授教学（如远程课堂，虚拟讨论等），另一种则充分利用了数字技术的潜能，增强了学习者和学习内容的交互（如虚拟现实）。两类应用中，新技术的成本结构是很不相同的。实时技术或异步虚拟讨论强调师生之间的交互，因此，它在边际成本和学生的数量之间，建立了一个固定对应的关系。同样，新技术可以优化基于资源的教学模式，这种模式的成本结构与传统远程教育相似，其开发成本可能很高，那么为了降低平均成本，就必须扩大招生的数量。但是，大多数学者认为教育质量和师生交互是息息相关的，提供充分交互的远程教学模式才能有生命力。这就意味着新形式的远程学习成本将会提高，而这种远程教学由于成本高昂，很可能让传统远程教育市场上的学生敬而远之。

远程教育如何挽回一些由于师生交互需求的增加而损失的效益（损失是因为新技术对传统远程教育成本结构的影响）？有两种方法可以考虑：协作和使用学习对象。远程与开放学习作为一个学习系统，其所有要素并不需要完全属于一个组织。这就可以通过降低任何一个组织的开发、教学、开辟新市场的成本，从而实现协同优势。学习对象不仅可以应用在一门课程的生命周期中，还可以在多个不同课程中使用。这就不仅可以在一门课程的选修者中分散开发的固定成本，而且可以在多门不同课程的总体选修学生中分散成本。

【关键词】远程教育；成本效益分析；交互；协作；学习对象

【中图分类号】G40054

【文献标识码】A

【文章编号】1007-2179（2006）06-0020-09

　*本文系作者在亚洲开放大学协会第20届（2006昆明）年会的主题报告修改稿，经昆明组委会及作者本人授权刊发。

The Distance Education Chameleon: 

New Technologies and the Changing Cost-structure of ODL

Thomas Hülsmann

(Center for Distance Education, University of Oldenburg，German)

Abstract: The paper starts by going back to the classical definition of distance education and its theoretically most influential conceptualization as ‘most industrialized form of teaching and learning’ by Otto Peters. The most salient realizations of this form of distance education have been open universities using print and broadcast technologies.

The cost-effectiveness of distance education was based on the media-equivalence hypothesis(with respect to outcomes) and the potential for scale economies (with respect to costs). In fact, accepting the mediaequivalence hypothesis allowed distance educators to largely collapse cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to cost-analysis. Cost-analysis allows to capture the cost-structure of distance teaching (i.e. the relative weight of fixed and variable cost per student in the total cost equation) and to mathematically model the cost impact under various circumstances. 

The weak point of traditional ODL was certainly the responsiveness of the communication between teacher and students (teacher-student interaction). The new digital and Internet-based technologies (referred to later as 'new technologies') allow now to realize two different types of learning scenarios:one which is more akin to traditional oncampus teaching (e.g. remote classroom; virtual seminar) and one which exploits the digital capabilities to enhance learnercontent interactivity (e.g. simulations). In both cases the impact o the new technologies on the coststructure is different. Synchronous technologies or asynchronous virtual seminars put more emphasis on teacherstudent interaction, thus re-establishing a lockstep relation between increasing costs and number of learners (a linkage distance education has prided itself to have broken). On the other hand new technologies also allow to making use of resource-based teaching approaches, a line of development which is in principle in line with the traditional coststructure of ODL though probably increasing the up-front costs of development, which means that, in order to bring average costs down to standard level, even larger enrollment numbers are required. 

However, given that for most educatorsqualityof education is strongly linked to student-teacher interaction the responsive forms of distance teaching will gain momentum. This poses the thread that the costs of distance learning will raise and that the new forms of distance education