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Universidad Estatal a Distancia
{{SimilarName| Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Spain
Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) is an autonomous public institution in Costa Rica. Its mission is to offer higher education to all social sectors, especially those that due to economic, social, geographical, cultural, or ethnical reasons or to disabilities or gender matters need opportunities for a real and equitable insertion into society.
Diverse technological advances that allow interaction and independent learning, as well as humanist, critical thinking education committed with the society and the environment are used for such matters.
UNED commits itself to academic excellence, culture, science, art and human rights development, to constitute a fair society and a culture of peace.
Its web site is at http://www.uned.ac.cr/ingles/
There is no wikipedia entry (in English).
Vision
(sourced from http://www.uned.ac.cr/ingles/rectoria/vision.htm)
UNED will lead distance teaching and learning processes using technologies and other social media in an appropriate and pedagogically mediated way.
It will promote people able to think and behave critically, creatively and autonomously to succeed in the auto instructional context.
To achieve this, it will promote the continuous excellence search as well as the basic academic demands: education, research, extension and production of didactic materials, to reach the highest quality educational levels desired, relevance and equity conditions and in compliance with the demands of different sectors of Costa Rican society.
Its academic function will be essentially considered as the creation, reaction, transmission and democratization of knowledge.
It will take part in the development of the country, being its main goal the inclusion of its graduates into society so that they can look for diverse and responsible ways of coexistence, the strengthening of democracy and the respect for the environment.
More details
There seems to be nothing very useful on its web site. We shall have to look elsewhere.
There is a case study by Greville Rumble at http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED222152&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED222152 but it dates from 1981.