Colin Latchem was a UK-born Australian researcher, writer and consultant in open and distance learning. His first experience of distance education was during his National Service in the UK when he was involved in designing pre digital age learning materials for use in Royal Army Education Corps centres around the world and on troopships going to the Korean War. After teaching and later lecturing in art and design, he decided to change career and become involved in research and development in educational media and technology in higher education. In the 1970s, he was a pioneer in the UK in educational television and learning resources and he established the Learning Resources Unit at Stranmillis College of Education (now part of Queen's University) Belfast. During this time he was also commissioned to conduct major consultancies for the UK Council for Educational Technology.
Coming to Australia in 1982, Colin took up a position at Curtin University in Perth, eventually holding a professorial level position as Head of the Teaching Learning Group. In this capacity, he ran a centre responsible for academic staff development, educational technology and open and distance learning. He co-developed the university’s strategic plan for teaching and learning and initiated the annual WA inter-university Teaching and Learning Forums, which are now in their 25th year. During this time, he also organized a number of international higher educational conferences in Indonesia. He also served on the programme committee of the Academic Programs Board of the Open Learning Australia consortium (now Open Universities Australia) and was President of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA). He also co-conducted a study for the WA Higher Education Office which led to the establishment of The Western Australian Telecentre Network (now known as Linkwest) whose 100+ centres serve remote and rural communities throughout regional WA. He also co-conducted a study for the Commonwealth of Learning which resulted in the Lifelong Learning for Farmers (L3F) program which now benefits many small-scale farmers in Asia, Papua New Guinea, Africa and the West Indies.
Since retiring from Curtin in 1997, Colin has been very busy internationally and academically. On three occasions he was a visiting professor at the National Institute of Multimedia Education in Japan (now merged with the Open University of Japan). He has also been a visiting professor at the Korea National Open University and a visiting researcher at the UK Open University. He has undertaken consultancies for a number of agencies including AusAid, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth of Learning, the University of Oldenburg, and UNESCO-UNEVOC. And he has run workshops and been a keynote speaker at conferences in PR China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the South Pacific, the Caribbean and Australia.
Colin has written, co-authored and co-edited a number of books on open and distance learning including Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global perspectives from leading innovators, co-authored with Professor Don Hanna at Wisconsin-Madison, which received the Charles A Wedemeyer award for best US book of the year on open and distance education. Colin has also published many book chapters, journal articles and conference and research papers. He was recently an Associate Editor of Distance Education and Education & Self Development in Russia and a Co- Editor of the SpringerBriefs series on Open and Distance Education. He was formerly the Asia-Pacific Corresponding Editor of The British Journal of Educational Technology.
Colin’s specialisms
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Planning, managing and evaluating open and distance learning
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Strategic planning
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Quality assurance
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Academic staff development
His recent research concerns open and distance learning in support of non-formal education in developing countries. See:
Latchem, C. (2014). Informal learning and non-formal education for development. Journal of Learning Development – JL4D, 1(1). http://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/6
Latchem, C. (2016). Learning technology and lifelong, informal, self-directed, and non-formal learning. In N. Rushby & D.W. Surry (Eds.). The Wiley Handbook of Learning Technology. Wiley & Sons. Inc.
Latchem, C. (In Press). Open and Distance Non-formal Education in Developing Countries. SpringerBriefs on Open and Distance Education. Hong Kong: Springer.