Student persistence in distance education: a cross‐cultural multi‐institutional perspective

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Abstract
Following the 12th World Conference of ICDE (Vancouver, 1982) the author was invited to coordinate a project aimed at opcrationalizing a research methodology that was discussed during the conference. The essence of the proposed methodology (Taylor and White, 1983) was to conduct essentially the same empirical study in a variety of distance education settings. It was thought that such an approach could engender an objective synthesis of research results that might lead to a significant contribution being made to the empirical basis for distance education. It was agreed that the study should focus on something of practical importance to distance educators. It was further agreed that the study could not be of too specialised a theoretical nature because of the need to involve a number of institutions across a wide range of cultural settings. It was finally agreed that the study should take a lead from Rekkedal's (1973) study on turn‐around time. Major contributions to this first ICDE International Research Project were made by L.J. Barker and V.J. White (Darling Downs IAE, Australia), G. Gillard (University of the South Pacific, Fiji), D. Kaufman (Open Learning Institute, Canada), A.N. Khan (Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan), R. Mezger(Tasmanian State Institute of Technology, Australia) and the ICDE Research Committee regional coordinators.