countries than other countries. Similarly, it is likely that there is an overrepresentation of
institution from countries that have English as an official language since the primary research
language was English. Still, it would be quite easy to include many more entries from North
America, since the listing from this area is intentionally partial. Among the 130 catalogue
entries, 59 (45.4%) were from the English language countries: USA, UK, Australia, Canada,
and Ireland.
Table 3. Distribution of institutions per continent
Continent Catalogue
entries
Interviews
North America
28
21,5 %
9
12,5 %
Europe 79
60,8 %
47
65,3 %
Asia 4
3,1 %
2
2,8 %
Latin America
4
3,1 %
3
4,2 %
Africa 1
0,8 %
1
1,4 %
Australia and New Zealand
10
7,7 %
9
12,5 %
Transnational 4
3,1 %
1
1,4 %
Sum
130
100.1 %
72
100.1 %
Table 3 indicates that institutions in Europe (60.8%), North America (21.5%), and Australia
with New Zealand (7.7%) overwhelmingly outnumbers institutions in South America (3.1%),
Asia (3.1%), and Africa (0.8%). Even though the researchers have a better knowledge of
Europe, North America, and Australia than they have of the rest of the world, the survey
testifies that these continents overwhelmingly dominate web based education.
Boshier et al. (1997) made a survey of educational web sites found via international search
engines in 1997. They found 127 sites with a distribution as shown in Table 4.
Table 4. Comparison of the Boshier and the CISAER distributions per region
Region Percent
Percent
Boshier
CISAR
N=127
N=130
USA 64.5
15.4
Canada 10.2
6.2
Australia/New Zealand
9.4
7.7
UK 11.0
13.1
Other European Countries
1.6
47.7
Asia 2.4
3.1
Latin America
0.8
3.1
Africa 0
0.8
Transnational 0
3.1
Sum 99.9
100.2
The CISAER analysis and the Boshier analysis seem to agree that countries with English as an
official language seem to dominated web based education. This obviously worried Boshier
and his Canadian colleagues who discussed the U.S. dominance in the article World Wide
America? (Wilson et al., 1998). However, the CISAER analysis has shown that there is much
more activities in the other European countries than Boshier found in his survey.
23