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DEOSNEWS Vol. 1 No. 15. This document has about 300 lines.
Copyright 1991 DEOS - The Distance Education Online Symposium
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EDITORIAL

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This issue of DEOSNEWS is from the latest issue (5.2) of the
American Journal of Distance Education. The authors have agreed
to respond to comments and questions about the article via e-
mail.

FEATURES OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN FINLAND

By Jouni Immonen and Jorma Rinta-Kanto
joimmonen@cc.helsinki.fi and
jorinka@firien.kontu.utu.fi

ADULT EDUCATION IN FINLAND

Typical features of the Finnish adult education system are wide
participation, a plentiful network of educational establishments,
and state support for these institutions and for the adult
students. Traditionally, Finns have been very actively involved
in general adult education. A good opportunity for this is
offered by the civic and workers' educational institutes, whose
activities extend even to village level.
In recent years, emphasis in adult education has been on the
development of vocational adult education. This has been es-
pecially needed as a result of the radical change in the struc-
ture of economic life. The old fields of production are reducing
their labor forces, and new fields are being formed; retraining
and further training of adults is essential. Also the interna-
tionalization of production necessitates additional training.
Ever-increasing flexibility, efficiency, and economy is demanded
of education. New strategies, approaches, and modes of implemen-
tation must be found in the area of training. In this situation,
there has been a special endeavor to develop distance education.

DEVELOPMENT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

Distance education in Finland, as elsewhere, has its roots
in correspondence courses. The first correspondence school was
established in the 1920s, and today the status of these schools
in Finland is assured by law. Distance professional training is
given at present by eight correspondence institutions, and
general education by four. There are over 30,000 students per
year.
The most extensive fields of professional training by
correspondence are business economy, marketing, technology,
commerce, and other business activities. The most popular
subjects of schools for general education by correspondence are
in the educational field, psychology, languages, art subjects,
and development of various social capabilities. In recent years,
the correspondence schools have diversified their modes of
teaching and have also made use of new communications technology
in their training programs. A good example is Finland's largest
distance education institute, the Markkinointi-instituutti
(Marketing Institute), which was founded in 1930. The Institute
organizes about seventy training programs a year, in which over
14,000 students participate. In addition to providing distance
education by correspondence, it produces written teaching ma-
terial for its training programs, organizes intensive courses,
and makes use of modern telecommunications in its teaching (for
instance audio teaching and communication by computer). The work
of correspondence schools has developed towards ever more exten-
sive use of distance teaching methods.
The Finnish distance education system has, since the mid-
1980s, been built to a considerable extent on radio and televi-
sion, in addition to correspondence courses. Of particular
interest to adult students have been the radio and television
language programs broadcast by Suomen Yleisradio, the Finnish
Broadcasting Company, since 1926 in a total of twelve languages.
The adult education institutions frequently organize group study
for the radio and television educational programs, and Yleisradio
produces a wide range of study material to supplement the cour-
ses. The proportion of radio and television broadcasting time
devoted to educational programs has been over five percent each
year.
Distance education became a central part of the Finnish
adult education strategy after the mid-1980s. The starting
points of educational policy in Finland for improving the status
of distance education and developing new modes of study were laid
down in 1986 by the Ministry of Education's working group on
distance education. The working group made extensive suggestions
as to measures for developing distance education in the following
areas: legislation, an information service for distance educa-
tion, student support, teacher training, production of study
material, payment policy, questions of copyright, and the appli-
cation of new communications technology in distance education.
Furthermore, in 1988 the government took a decision-in-principle
on the development of vocational adult education. Stress was
placed on the development of teaching methods, and especially of
distance education. After that, at a rapid rate, numerous
projects were started to experiment with and develop distance
education, particularly in vocational adult education and open
university teaching. These undertakings have been implemented
with state financial support.
The projects in vocational adult education were started in
institutions which had previously only used face-to-face teach-
ing. Distance education was an entirely new mode of operation,
and in the experiments there was an endeavor to develop various
forms of combined teaching (face-to-face teaching, distance
education, linking of teaching to work). One of the more exten-
sive experimental projects has been the Lapland adult education
experiment, in which distance education has been applied to
training in the fishery business and the data technology field.
With the new training systems, an adult can train for a new
profession by means of a flexible system of study requirements,
in which earlier working experience can be combined with study in
an educational institution, with independent study, and with
various forms of distance education.

DISTANCE EDUCATION AT UNIVERSITIES

In the 1970s, there was lively discussion concerning the founding
of an open university in Finland. Instead of establishing a
special institution of that kind, distance education was intro-
duced into many existing higher educational institutions in
special "open university" programs.
Continuing education centers were established in univer-
sities, but no separate open university was established. All
twenty Finnish higher education institutions now have supplemen-
tary training centers as well as thirty-eight regional teaching
locations. The network of supplementary training centers offers a
dense coverage of the whole country, whose population is about
five million inhabitants.
The founding of the centers and the rapid increase in their
staff has been the most significant growth phenomenon in Finnish
higher education in the 1980s and 1990s. A Finnish university
has traditionally been a very closed institution, giving training
opportunities mainly to young students. Supplementary training
and open university teaching has opened up higher education and
brought adult students as well as new teaching methods into the
university. In 1989, about 90,000 students received teaching
from the supplementary training centers; of these, approximately
26,000 received open university instruction.
Most of the teaching organized by the centers is still
traditional face-to-face teaching. However, nearly one-fifth of
the students participate in distance education courses. The
relative proportion of distance education use is growing, and
there is in fact a conscious effort in this direction. For
example, in connection with the supplementary training centers at
Helsinki and Turku Universities, separate units have been set up
to take care of the development of distance education. The
centers also produce written study material and audiovisual
material and have begun to initiate research activity relating to
distance education. The centers have very few teachers of their
own; therefore, the courses are planned in cooperation with
university departments and teachers.

COOPERATION IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

A typical feature of the Finnish open university distance educa-
tion courses is cooperative organization. The parties cooperat-
ing with the university in implementation of the teaching are
civic and workers' educational institutes, as well as folk high
schools. Almost every Finnish township has such an establish-
ment, or one of its teaching locations; there are 278 people's
educational institutes and ninety folk high schools. The basic
task of the institutions is to organize adult education of a
general nature in their own areas. In Finland there is thus a
ready-made network with lecture halls and administrative staff
covering the whole country, and the universities have not had to
build their own separate network of study centers. As very
flexible educational establishments, the institutions can allo-
cate teaching facilities for the universities' distance education
programs, and can also hire the necessary local teachers.
Additionally, the folk high schools can organize residential
courses lasting several days. The institutions do not have
permanent teachers for distance higher education, but rather for
each course they hire a part-time teacher. The role of the
university is to plan the distance education program, produce the
study material, train the teachers, and evaluate the study
performance. Each university decides annually which establish-
ments will function as locations for distance education programs.
The institutions may cooperate with several universities.
The universities arrange distance education courses in
cooperation with institutions either throughout the country or
only in their own area. Courses covering the whole country have
been organized by Helsinki and Turku Universities: in 1991 they
each held nine such courses. Each of these universities cooper-
ates with fifty to seventy educational institutions every year.
There are ten to thirty institutions cooperating with a univer-
sity in a course on any one subject. The traditional mode of
teaching at the institutions is small group instruction. Because
of this Finnish tradition, forms of group study, rather than
study taking place alone, are often emphasized in distance
education courses. The typical size of a study group at an
institution is ten to thirty students. Group study offers many
advantages for adult students; on the other hand, according to
experience, it can restrict independent study and progress. For
this reason, new models, in which group support and self-det-
ermined study can be combined, have been developed.

MEDIA FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION

The main medium for study is written study material; audiocasset-
tes and, to a lesser extent, videocassettes are accessories for
many courses. Telephone teaching has come into very wide use
during the last two to three years. As an extension of audiotel-
econferencing, an audiographic media network is being developed
for use by most of the universities. Communication by computer
is spreading to distance higher education. The Yleisradio
broadcasting corporation had an important role in the distance
education experiments of the 1970s and 1980s. In Finland, there
is a very high-quality basic communications network covering the
entire country; it offers possibilities for the quick utilization
of new innovations.

RESEARCH ACTIVITY

In connection with the current open university distance education
projects, research has focused special attention on the following
issues:
- Targeting of distance education;
- Didactical questions in distance education;
- Functionality of the distance education system from the
student's point of view;
- Achievement of self-direction;
- Guidance and support for study;
- New teaching technology in distance education; and
- Costs of distance education.

The first research undertakings in connection with distance
education development projects have been mainly in educational
sociology at the macro level. However, the emphasis of research
is shifting more and more towards examination of the learning
process itself.

CREATION OF COOPERATIVE NETWORKS

In the development of distance education, increased interaction
is essential at both national and international levels. In
December 1991, the Finnish Association for Distance Education
(Suomen eteopetusyhdistys) was founded to coordinate cooperation
at a national level and to promote international cooperation,
research work, and training in the area of distance education.
Together with the Swedish and Norwegian Associations for Distance
Education, and the Danes, cooperation has been launched in the
Scandinavian region. Moreover, Finnish educational institutions
are involved in many projects for European cooperation, for
example Eurostep, EuroPACE, Comett, Delta, and Saturn.
The supplementary training center at Turku University, and
Helsinki University's research and training center in Lahti, have
close cooperative relations with the American Center for the
Study of Distance Education at the Pennsylvania State University.
The Director of the Center, Dr. Michael Moore, has worked in both
Finnish centers for two summers. As one part of this cooper-
ation, a course in program design of distance education was
implemented in the fall of 1990 by means of audio teaching
between Penn State and Finland. This cooperation in training
will be continued in the fall of 1992.

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