Abstract: | Even though distance education is tangibly expanding all over the globe, its practice and
experienced challenges are becoming the major concern of educational research. Among
commonly faced challenges, poor attitudes towards the essence and effectiveness of distance
education are being reported as commonly faced challenges of dual impacts. It was, therefore,
aimed in this study at carrying out extensive literature survey so as to find out the level of
attitudes of all respective bodies and come up with common influencing factors. It was also
aimed to discuss the implication of those set of attitude and influential factors on the future of
higher education institutions. As a result, it was found in many studies that distance
institutions’ instructors, students and owners themselves have poor attitudes towards its
essence and effectiveness. Some recent studies, however, revealed that respective stakeholders
have already started to have a better feeling about it in some countries due to presence of relevant
and flexible curriculum, utilization of adequate expertise and more interactive technological
modes of instruction which enhance access of attaining global knowledge from world-class
scholars. |