Otto Peters


Dr. Otto Peters is the Founding Rector and professor emeritus at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany. He has made contributions to the conceptual development of distance education. His main theory was called The Industrial Model. In this monograph "Distance education and industrial production: a comparative interpretation in outline" he described distance education as the most industrialized form of teaching and learning. He incorporated business management terms to show the industrial characteristics of distance education such as division of labour, assembly line, mass production and planning.

Education

Peters did his initial schooling from 1932 to 1940 in Berlin.
As he was interested in the field of education he went on to do teacher training in West Prussia from 1940 to 1944. In 1947 he did further studies in History, English, Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy with the Humboldt-University of Berlin. While teaching he continued his studies and graduated from the Free University of Berlin in 1960. In 1972 he pursued his doctorate at the University of Tübingen.

Academic career

Year/periodPositionInstitution/placeAcademic achievement
After the World WarTeacherBerlin-Kreuzberg
1963SecretaryEducational Centre of BerlinWrote first books on distance education
between 1963 and 1969Deputy Director of the Department of Methodology of TeachingEducational Centre of BerlinWrote further books on distance education
1969Head of the Division of Comparative Distance Education ResearchGerman Institute for Distance Education at University of TübigenDoctor phil.
1974Professor of EducationBerlinFull professor
1975Founding RectorFernUniversität in HagenTravelled and studied distance education in countries such as Japan, China, Australia, US and Great Britain
Since 1991Professor EmeritusFernUniversität in HagenContinued distance education research

Research

Peters started and established distance education research virtually as early as 1964. Hence he, together with Börje Holmberg, was called "a father of distance education research". In order to emphasize its importance and the special quality level of higher education he changed the so far mainly commercially used term "correspondence study" into the now worldwide accepted new term "Distance education".
His main contribution to the theory of distance education was his 1973 doctoral dissertation Die didaktische Struktur des Fernunterrichts: Untersuchungen zu einer industrialisierten Form des Lehrens und Lernens. Noting that the field was dominated by Anglophone scholars, Desmond Keegan persuaded him to translate the main parts of this book into English. From 1969 to 1974 Peters was engaged in comparative distance teaching research whilst at the German Institute for Distance Education at the University of Tübigen. For over forty years the focus of his research was on the development and conceptual changes of distance education. He believed that not only industrialization, but also culture, economics and politics are highly influential on the respective distance teaching activities.
His research achievements have been recognized all over the world. He has received five honorary doctorate degrees from the Open University in England, Deakin University in Australia, New York University in the US, the Open University of Hong Kong and the University of Guadalajara, Mexico for advances in his field. He has received the Prize for Excellence from the International Council for Open and Distance Education. He was chosen as a member of the International Hall of Fame for Adult and Continuing Education.

Publications

Peters' first theoretical analysis of distance education was published as a 45-page monograph in 1967 entitled Das Fernstudium an Universitäten und Hochschulen: didaktische Struktur und vergleichende lnterpretation: ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Fernlehre. The second half of this monograph was translated and published by the University of Oldenburg and is also to be found in D. Sewart, D. Keegan and B. Holmberg.
Apart from this early monograph Otto Peters wrote 24 books and countless articles on the challenges, conceptual developments and perspectives of distance education. Some of his main books are:
In his latest book, Peters explained not only the pros of digitalization, but also the cons, bringing together the opinions of other critics in fields related to education such as lawyers, computer scientists and philosophers. One conclusion they came to was that digitalization will have a definite impact on the world. The general idea is that we cannot take anything for granted even though everything is digitized. There should be face-to-face interactions and a balance has to be made between the digital world and the world outside of that.

Additional resources