Distance education in Slovenia : a case study of innovation

Abstract

In Slovenia, the development of modern open/distance education started at the beginning of the nineties at a traditional university having considerable experience in the delivery of part-time study courses. The initiative of developing a distance education programme were carried out within the framework of the PHARE Programmefor Multi-country Co-operation in Distance Education, in which 11 Central and East European beneficiary countries were involved. The Faculty of Economics of the University of Ljubljana was selected as a pilot institution for Slovenia. The paper shows how the synergy created through the combination of existing domestic resources as well as the local social and educational environment with outside expertise served to bring about a self-sustainable distance education programme and to improve the quality of mass higher education services offered by a traditional university.