Leadership in Distance Education: Is It a Unique Type of Leadership - A Literature Review

Numerous articles and documents have been written about the management of distance education. The International Centre for Distance Learning (ICDL) Distance Education Library and the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) alone contain hundreds of such documents. Most of these documents, however, examine distance education policy, institution management, student support systems and student administration relevant to the first three generations of distance education delivery models [correspondence, multimedia and telelearning]. Surprisingly little appears to have been written about the academic management and administration of what Taylor (1996) labels as fourth generation distance education delivery [flexible learning].