History

GUIDE Association, founded in 2005 by the Università degli Studi “Guglielmo Marconi”, has been officially launched during the international conference GUIDE 2006 - Towards the development of Common Platform for Global Cooperation - that took place on February the 13th and 14th of the same year at the National Council of Researches (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) in Rome.

The idea of creating a global network for all institutions linked to e-learning and distance education originates from the need to support cooperation and exchange between different region of the world within an international virtual space, where improve scientific research about digital technologies use and applications.

While at the beginning GUIDE members were mainly European universities, over the years GUIDE has reached a global dimension with the representation of different geographic areas such as Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and Middle East.

At present, more than 100 open universities and distance education institutions coming from all over the world are joining the Association. The joint research activities and projects are carried out in the different geographic areas under the coordination of the Board of Regional Representatives.