Country snapshots of distance education and e-learning in Latin America

Although the situation of e-learning in Latin America varies greatly across countries, all of them have seen an increase in the availability of e-learning in higher education. One of the few aspects that are common to all the countries’ experiences is that new policies and programmes involving e-learning have been strongly influenced by the objective of increasing access to higher education among the population. The concept of e-learning in Latin America is therefore intrinsically linked to distance education. This is hardly surprising, given the expanding supply of higher education in the region. Increasing the supply of higher education has been made the main objective, in some cases to the detriment of other equally important aspects such as the quality of programmes offered, especially for those with fewer resources, and the adaptation of programmes to meet the specific training needs of traditionally excluded sectors of the population.