CALL FOR PAPERS
Journal of IT for Development
Special Issue on Distance Education
www.itd.ist.unomaha.edu
Aims and Scope
More than half of the world’s population lives in villages and settlements with populations
ranging from 50 to 1000 people. In many regions, people in these villages are
geographically isolated, and so are underserved by traditional educational institutions, and
so are under-represented among those who reap the intellectual, social, physical, and
political benefits of education. The goal of this special issue is to advance understanding
of how technology can be used to provide access to education at all levels to learners who
have been traditionally underserved by conventional institutions of learning, and who are
therefore under-represented among those who reap the intellectual, economic, social,
physical, and political benefits of education.
This special issue seeks to advance knowledge on how information and communication
technology can be used for distance education to advance human, social, or economic
development. Achieving such advances often requires 1) Strategies for setting up
distance education programs between underserved regions and those that are more
developed, 2) Best practices for working distributed environments in different countries; 3)
Theories that explain how IT can be used in Education to improve development; and 4)
Tools and techniques for ascertaining the effects of IT infrastructures on distance
education. This special issue solicits papers on all these topics.
Topics addressed
We solicit both academic and practitioner papers on theoretical, empirical, and practical
aspects of distance education for development. Topics could include, but are not limited
to:
Devepment Issues
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Bridging the Digital Divide for Distance Education
IT and the global learning community
Distance Education and the Digital Divide
Legal Frameworks for International Cooperation on Distance Education
Adoption, diffusion, and rate-of-uptake of IT for distance education
Scalability, Security and stability of network and infrastructure for Distance Education
Distance Education and the Sustainability of Development
Policy Issues
 Governance of Distance Education Initiatives
 Public Policy for Distance Education
 Innovations in Capacity Building through Distance Education
 Financing Strategies for Distance Education Initiatives
Distance Education Issues
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Distance Education For Multi-Ethnic, Multi-Cultural Populations Of Learners
Social Computing for Online Communities of Learners and Practitioners
Discourse Features and Pattern Languages for Distance Education
Pedagogy for Distance Education
Discourse Design and Instructional Design for Distance Education
Overcoming Inadequate Technical Infrastructure
Theories of Learning and Development and their applications to Distance Education for
Development
Learner engagement and retention in Distance Education
Partnerships and Cooperative Development for Distance Learning
Student Services for Distance Learners
Best Practices for Distance Education
Papers submitted to the special issue should address the use of IT for distance education
on the human, social, or economic development.
Deadlines
March 1, 2006: Papers must be submitted to editors
May 7, 2006: Authors will be notified of editorial decisions. Accepted papers will be
returned to authors for revisions required by reviewers
July 1: Revised versions of papers must be returned to editors
July 7: Final acceptance notifications
Paper Submission Instructions
Papers must be submitted on or before March 1, 2006. Please feel free to contact the
editors for guidance during the writing process.
Submissions to ITD may be either full research papers (maximum 9000 words) published
in the main part of the Journal, or commentaries published in the section “View from
Practice” (maximum 2000 words). After initial screening, full research papers are reviewed
by selected members of the editorial board and peers from an international pool for quality,
consistency and research contribution. Authors are welcome to nominate an editorial board
member or reviewer when submitting their paper.
Papers submitted to this journal must contain original results and must not be submitted
elsewhere while being evaluated for the Journal of Information Technology for
Development.
Papers should be double-spaced 12 point type (Arial or Times New Roman fonts preferred)
Title Page should include the title of the article and the names and contact information of all
authors. First page of manuscript should include article title, but no author information.
Please submit papers electronically as e-mail attachments in either MSWord or RTF file
formats to bob.briggs@uaf.edu and curt.madison@uaf.edu. Questions regarding
submissions should be directed to the same addresses.
For subscriptions contact Isabelle Cohen DeAngelis icohen@wiley.com. Online licenses for
institutions are also available.
Special Issue Editors
Robert O. Briggs
bob.briggs@uaf.edu
+1.907.474.7352
Curt Madison
curt.madison@uaf.edu
+1.907.474.5197
Center for Distance Education
College of Rural and Community Development
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Robert O. Briggs researches the cognitive foundations of collaboration and learning and applies his
findings to the design and development of collaboration and learning technologies. He has
published more than 90 peer reviewed scholarly works on theoretical, experimental, and applied
aspects of collaboration. He is currently Visiting Research Professor at the Center for Distance
Education in the College of Rural and Community Development at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks, and Associate Professor of Systems Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the
Netherlands. He is co-inventor of the thinkLets concept and co-founder of the emerging discipline of
collaboration engineering. In 1994 he earned his Ph.D. in Management with a concentration on
Information Systems and a minor in Communication.
Curt Madison is Director of the Center for Distance Education in the College of Rural and
Community Development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is an internationally recognized
pioneer in distance education who was instrumental in designing and deploying a voice-and-data
satellite communication system for geographically-isolated villages in Arctic and Subarctic Alaska.
He publishes scholarly works on instructional design, pedagogy, and management of distance
education initiatives. Curt is also an internationally acclaimed maker of documentary films on
Native Alaskan culture, and the author/editor of 26 books presenting oral histories of Alaskans. He
earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Arizona with a minor in Information
Systems.