Rethinking Distance Education in North America: Canadian & Mexican perspectives on Open Access & Online Learning

This paper will review the current situation on Open Access in North America and its potential impact on distance education and online learning. Open access to academic publications for research purposes is strongly interrelated with instructional design (ID), online learning (OL) and educational technology (ET). As North American colleges and universities increase their outreach capacity via online teaching, access to freely-available, online resource materials is becoming problematic to the point that it is seriously impeding online course design and delivery. Students demand accessibility to higher education and online materials, faculty demand quality in the design and delivery of higher education and administrators demand cost-effectiveness in course and program delivery. Meeting all of these needs require major rethinking on the part of all partners in education. Open Access proponents, such as the Public Knowledge Project(PKP), wish to '"improve both the scholarly quality and public accessibility and coherence of this body of knowledge (academic research) in a sustainable and globally accessible form'". This paper, bringing together researchers from Canada and Mexico, will explore ways and means of lowering barriers to knowledge accessibility and promoting cooperative communities of practice in which knowledge creation and sharing can flourish.