THE beauty of distance learning is that students can study from virtually anywhere in the world, even those living in the most inhospitable and remote regions of the globe.

The Open University (OU), for example, has nearly a quarter of a million distance learners, with more than a fifth of them studying outside the UK. Nearly 17,000 of its students are working towards MScs and other postgraduate qualifications.

The university’s students have included soldiers on duty in war zones or on military exercises abroad, workers on oil rigs in the North Sea and a host of other expatriate workers based on the Continent and further afield.

One student, for example, studied for his final assignment while on a nuclear submarine in the Arctic. Another was a circus musician, who studied in a circus truck as it toured the country.

OU distance learning students living overseas are supported in their studies in a similar way to UK students. They receive their course materials by post for home study and are allocated a tutor who will support them by post and, depending on course and tutor, by phone, fax, e-mail or internet conferencing.

Depending on the number of students in their area, there could be opportunities for face to face tuition and informal student support groups.

Jeanine Bossy, 34, from Cambourne in Cambridgeshire, studied for her MSc in development management while living in Nakuru, Kenya, in the heart of the Rift Valley. “It was absolutely amazing to be able to link up with all these other students predominantly in the UK but also in other areas of the world,” she says. “It was only ever tricky when our internet connection was intermittent and very slow.

“Using the internet to connect like-minded people across the world works very well. We had online seminars, e-mailed off assignments and got feed-back. Although I could not go to the face to face tutorials in the UK, the tutor was really good and would often e-mail to everyone the salient points from the tutorials. I managed to get merits and distinctions for every single module I did, so I don’t think I missed out by being in Kenya.”

Simon Bridle, 34, originally from Pontypridd, in South Wales, works in the security field in Afghanistan, having recently spent four years in Iraq. He is a distance learning student studying for an MSc in risk, crisis and disaster management with Leicester University’s Institute of Lifelong Learning.

“My job means working in difficult and dangerous conditions where sometimes we are shelled through the day and night,” he says. “I take my books into the shelters. I have to study wherever I can, which sometimes means carrying books in a rucksack in place of luxuries.

“I study in American camps or at points of safety after following nasty people all day and night.”

Muhammed Mukaddas, a 34-year-old from Bauchi state, in Nigeria, who works for Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is studying by distance learning for a Leicester University MSc in emergency planning management.

He says that studying is difficult because Bauchi is prone to religious and ethnic clashes, often leading to loss of life and property. Frequent power cuts at night are also a big constraint on his ability to study.

Distance learning, he adds, is also expensive – there is the cost of the course fees and the expense of having to attend three compulsory study periods at college in the UK.

Mukaddas wants the MSc so as to be able to help in planning for emergencies in Africa and in the world at large.

RAF man clocksup MSc after 14 highflying years

AN RAF air frames engineer who left school with just a clutch of GCSEs has spent the past 14 years studying for a BSc and then MSc in his spare time while flying around the world servicing RAF Hercules transport planes.

Sergeant Richard Marriott, 35, who is based at RAF Leuchars in Fife, joined the service 17 years ago with GCSEs in English, double science and mathematics.

Over the years, while servicing aircraft in the Middle and Far East, America, Newfoundland, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean, Marriott worked his way through an Open University foundation social science course and then a medley of psychology courses.

“I just got into the habit of studying,” he says. “I discovered that I actually quite liked it. It was just a hobby that got out of hand.

“Hercules are quite slow aircraft. I used to spend eight hours at a time flying back from the United States, so I would sit in the back of the aircraft and read away.”

Eight years ago he was awarded a BSc degree in psychology and last October he achieved his MSc in psychology.

In future he hopes to study for an MA in criminology and, one day perhaps, when he has retired from the air force, a PhD in psychology.