Abstract:

Our era, in contrast to the previous ones, has grown from a predominantly physical and agro-based society into a fully-fledged knowledge driven society.  This has been coupled by technological advancement and changes in the global market where there is heightened corporate competition, sliding meanings of everything and hence a need to harness knowledge as an invaluable asset. Employees are now hired on the merit of their skill, experience and knowledge depth against the strictly agricultural and industrial societies’ criterion where physical strength was the economic commodity.  The acquisition of knowledge, the retention of knowledge and the meaning have all changed.  It is in view of this new era, this new phenomenon that this paper discusses the transformative aspect of open learning towards global equity and brain gain.  As the paper will show, open learning has become a penetrating tool for development.  There is a movement towards value creation, stakeholder satisfaction, social responsibility and integrative approaches to education against a primarily profit maximizing [capitalist] society.
The author discusses the historical perspective, the conceptual framework as well as the proposed prescription for the current problem.

Full text available as: Microsoft Word

Kurasha, Primrose (2007). The transformative aspect of open and distance learning towards equity and national brain gain: the Zimbabwe Open University case. To be presented at the Conference of Rectors, Vice Chancellors and Presidents of African Universities ( COREVIP ), Tripoli, Libya, 21-25 October.