While technology-mediated education in Mexico and Latin America has advanced significantly in recent decades, it has had to surmount several major obstacles to become an education-policy instrument that represents a real alternative, not only for mitigating the gap in higher education that affects many citizens and limits their access to a better quality of life, but also for providing quality higher and postgraduate education.

Latin American countries are struggling with problems associated with technology and telecommunications infrastructure, known as the "digital divide." They are also confronted with higher education models, laws, and regulations that prevent this mode of education from becoming a real, quality alternative for thousands of young people and adults who want to carry on studying, but for whom traditional face-to-face education is not really an option.

Regarding digital competence, many Latin American countries are marked by a series of contrasts and contradictions, as well as endless problems associated with unequal access to technology: the most modern institutions located in big cities allow practically every student to make digital spaces part of their daily learning environment, irrespective of whether or not they physically attend a university.


Consequently, there is a need to analyze what is actually happening with interactions of various types, including those between students and their learning environments, between students and their lecturers, and between students and their fellow students.

At the opposite end of the scale are university institutions located outside capitals or big cities. While not benefitting from the same financial advantages as the others, they are often subject to the centrally designed and implemented demands of providing the same coverage, education, and academic quality as their urban counterparts.


Such institutions struggle to survive on very few resources and very few or almost no digital competence options for their students or teaching staff. They are under great pressure to provide coverage and, quite rightly, they see technology as a way forward in terms of offering professional training to the growing population of young people who want it.

However, the lack of planning, sustainability, and knowledge about the characteristics, needs, and requirements of distance education tends to raise false expectations and ultimately leads to poor results.

While there are many success stories and effective new approaches to these and other problems, very few of them have been documented; hence the importance of this joint RUSC and SINED effort to publish a compilation of them in a special issue.


Thematic areas

RUSC is interested in receiving research articles on the theme of the Dossier from all educational sectors around the world. Specifically, the thematic areas of the Dossier are

• distance higher education policies
• distance education innovation
• national distance education organisations in the 21st century
• the challenges for distance higher education in Mexico and Latin America in the 21st century
• success stories and good practices.

The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2012. Articles should be no longer than 5,000 words. This Dossier will be published in Volume 10, No 2 (July 2013).