Thirty Years of Distance Education: Personal Reflections

This paper reflects on the evolving experience of modern distance education (DE) as a field of practice for professionals and as a medium for student access to education and training. The writer's 30 years in the field, as both teacher and student, has coincided with the five-stage evolution of DE delivery defined by Taylor (1995-2010). The author considers the perceived identity crisis and diverse theoretical frameworks of the field since the 1980s as well as the need for new levels of change management to enable the tools, technologies, and emerging systems of DE in order to create the flexibility, responsiveness, and networking that students require and that teachers need to learn.