"Reaching the masses in developing economies" : a global focus on distance management education

This is the era of "Knowledge Management". The new century will be full of cataclysmic technological changes, particularly in the area of information and communication. Developing economies like India are in a rapid evolution from being technologically backward to being at par with the rest of the world and beyond in the 21st century. Through this transformation process new opportunities and challenges are being felt which need to be handled and utilized to upgrade their education system for a better tomorrow. Over the past decade or so, there has been a major worldwide expansion of distance education systems, particularly online, Web-based systems. The advent of lT revolution can be harnessed for transforming management education, particularly through the distance mode of learning. The increasing demand for management education, in a global market, and the revolution in information technology provide an opportunity to change the curricula and delivery system of management education so as to provide prospective managers an edge to successfully face the challenge in a globally competitive setting. Therefore, management education and IT have to develop a mutually supportive relationship for achieving excellence. Today, the world needs global professional managers in all sectors to bring positive changes in the economy and society. This is possible by preparing change agents in the form of globally competent and professional managers. Therefore, a need exists for an interface between Global Management Education and IT, which is interdependent. With this revolution, the concept of distance education for global management education can take a different shape, by providing technological tools for education delivery through CD-ROM on multimedia personal computers, videos, virtual classrooms, satellite and cable TV's and also a franchisee network imparting video based live facilitated training, distance education through automated libraries and networking of institutes to pool and share resources and information. This conceptual paper present the case of Lamcon Reach a unique distance learning initiative and business opportunity. This paper presents the synergy that can be obtained through partnerships in distance education. It focuses on the trends, issues and challenges that have to be taken into account to bring bout an innovative integrated distance learning experience in developing economies. It discusses a theoretical framework for applying learning and instructional strategies that is currently in the process of being implemented for a distance education teaching-learning environment. The results of that implementation will be reported at a later date.