Some difficulties in distance learning in developing countries Hédia Mhiri Sellami Higher Institute of Management of Tunis (ISG) Hedia.mhiri@isg.rnu.tn Abstract This paper presents the difficulties, which the students and the teachers are faced with in the distance learning process. We will begin by presenting the technical and the administrative difficulty concerning the student. In the second part we present the technical and conceptual constraints that a teacher have to take into account in the distance learning process. 1. Introduction I have had the opportunity to practice many aspects of the distance learning process. Last year, I was a student of the Louis Pasteur University in France while carrying out my job, which is a permanent computer assistant at the Higher Institute of Management of Tunis (ISG) in my country, Tunisia. In fact I was enrolled in a ‘DESS’ diploma offered by this French university with the collaboration of other universities and the agency of French-speaking universities. We were thirty students working in the university in the teaching or administrative field with a minimum level of four years after the baccalaureate. We were from different countries like France (4), Morocco (3), Tunisia (4), Madagascar (2), Venezuela (2), Vietnam (1), Tcheque (1), Senegal (2), Tchad (1)…Our courses where on the French platform ‘ACOLADE’ [2], the Swiss one ‘TECFA’ [3] and the Belgium platform ‘ESPRIT’ [4]. Since the beginning of this academic year I changed sides to become a teacher in a distance learning course and I will present some difficulties for each side. 2. Student difficulties As all distance learning process, all of our contacts were via the platform. We had seventeen courses, each one lasts generally two weeks during which we had two appointments in a chatting room with a tutor. This supposes we looked at the course content to prepare questions and the work relevant to the course in collaboration with other students. 2.1. The course’s preparation We have four possibilities to be connected to Internet: from the agency of French-speaking universities, from our institution, from a cyber-cafe or from our homes. The French agency was rarely used, even if it is free for us, because it has fixed hours and also it is not near our homes or our jobs. The cyber-cafe was used when the home or job connexion does not work and also at the beginning of each course to download it. Cyber-cafe generally offers a high connexion quality. The university connexion is essentially used when we go to teach, even if it is free. In fact we are not sure to have a connexion and an available computer as not all of the teacher have a desk-room and a computer in it. The home connexion is frequently used even if it is not free, not always available and its debit is very low as it is a phone connexion but it releases us from the time constraint. The difficulties mentioned are true for all the southerner students. This is not the case for student from the ‘north’ countries where the ADSL connexion is frequent and exists in the universities or even at home. Besides the connexion’s difficulties some courses present difficulties to be downloaded as some of them must be loaded page by page which increases the expenses. We can also mention a last difficulty, which is at the same time an essential component in the art of course’s conception: the questions with multiple choices. The interactive aspect of these questions is not frequently loaded with the course and student could not benefit of them in the ‘loadable’ version. 2.2. The tutoring appointment Before each chatting session with a tutor we are stressed because we are not sure to be connected. Hopefully we have the solution of the archive of the chat. This stress exits also in each appointment with peers to deal with a work to prepare so we generally use Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’05) 0-7695-2338-2/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE