Desmond Keegan

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Desmond Keegan is an Irish scholar in the field of education. He studied at University College Dublin, earning a BA in Classical European Civilization and an MA in Medieval European Civilization.

Keegan helped distinguish distance education from regular study. In 1979 he started the international journal Distance Education, the first publication to focus on this area. The journal is still published today and remains a leading voice in the field. He raised several key questions, including the role of synchronous technology, access and equity, the social impact of distance learning, the skills learners and teachers need to use electronic tools, and whether students will participate in online classrooms.

His doctoral work, Foundations of Distance Education, was published in 1986. It had later editions (1990, 1996) and was translated into Italian and Chinese. The book was also used as a set text for the Open University’s MA in Open and Distance Education in 1997. In his later career he produced ten books on distance education and related topics, along with many analyses and online writings between 1992 and 2003.

Keegan began his distance education career in 1978 as Head of School at the South Australian College of External Studies (SACES). In 1980 he founded the international journal on distance education. In 1992 he started the Routledge Studies in Distance Education Series, a 20-volume set published through 2003, with Professor A. Tait as joint executive editor for part of the project.

A key idea Keegan advanced is the reintegration of the teaching acts. Distance education separates teacher and learner, but the daily work of the distance educator is to reintegrate the acts of teaching that distance can disrupt.

He also carried out a large census of distance education in the European Union as of January 1, 1996, counting students across government distance training, correspondence schools, open universities, and university distance courses. The total was about 2.35 million students, showing that distance education was a major, growing part of European training. The findings were published by the European Commission.

Keegan contributed to new forms of distance education, including mobile learning—teaching and learning on smartphones and small tablets. In 1999 he started his first European Commission project, funded in 2000.