According to the Statutes of the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education
(IITE) distance education is one of its priority areas of activities, and the IITE Governing
Board adopted the IITE international project «Distance Education: Structure, Methodology, Staff
Development and Legal Aspects». Within its framework it was decided to hold an international
expert meeting the central objective of which was to discuss the main trends of development of
the IITE activities in the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs) usage in
distance education.
It was planned to follow the expert meeting by a workshop “Distance Education: Networking and
Staff Development”. Its main objectives were to demonstrate existing facilities for networking
in distance education and, using the opportunity to make it possible for the experts from
different countries to enlighten for the vast audience their experience in ICTs usage in
networking and staff development for distance education.
8 experts, 4 invited speakers and 15 observers, all at all 27 nominated participants form 9
countries (Australia, Belarus, Canada, Israel, Italy, Russian Federation, Tanzania, Ukraine and
United Kingdom) and the European Distance Education Network (EDEN) attended those events. They
represented open universities of Israel, Russian Federation, Tanzania and the United Kingdom, as
well as centers specialized in distance education and/or its support from Australia, Belarus,
Canada, Ukraine. The representatives of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO and
the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Communication, Ministry of Science and Technologies of
the Russian Federation attended the meeting and workshop.