This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explores the similarities and differences between the ways in which they are organized and structured. It is the first book to make such comparisons and draw conclusions about the nature of open and distance education in the context of various national higher education systems. In a digital era with growing use of online education as well as open and distance education, this book is particularly useful for policy-makers and senior administrators who want to learn about organizing and expanding open and distance education provision. It is also a valuable reference for researchers, academics and students interested in understanding the different approaches to open and distance education.

Adnan Qayyum is an Assistant Professor of Lifelong Learning and Adult Education at Pennsylvania State University. His areas of expertise are open and distance education, adult education, comparative and international education, instructional design, curriculum planning, educational planning and evaluation. He is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Distance Education, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Olaf Zawacki-Richter is Associate Dean and Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Oldenburg (Germany), where he teachers at the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences and the Centre for Lifelong Learning. His areas of expertise are distance education, e-learning, instructional design, online student support, and educational technologies in higher education and K12 and human resource management. Between 2008 and 2010, he held a fixed term professorship in educational technology at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany's Open University. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL), Distance Education, Open Learning and the Open University of Sri Lanka Journal. He has been an invited keynote speaker, chair and reviewer at numerous international conferences. In 2014/2015, he was a guest professor at the National Centre of Educational Computing and Online Learning at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Together with Terry Anderson, Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University, Canada, he edited the book Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda published by Athabasca University Press (open access).