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.
Followed 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.