This paper attempts to present the characteristics and development of Self Learning Material. Programmed learning has certain principles which are useful as guidelines while preparing the self learning material. The course writers are expected to adopt these principles.

Teaching in Distance Education system is generally considered an activity, which is designed and performed for multiple objectives, in terms of changes in learners' behaviours. The distance education organizers should use different strategies of teaching which match the objectives of teaching on the one hand and learners' style and personality dimensions on the other.

The organizers of Distance Education have to deal with large and diverse groups of learners very different from those in conventional stream. They have to organize the learning experiences, and adopt techniques of teaching to which learners can respond as matured individuals. The choice of educational objectives and the methodology must be suitable.

Programmed learning is leaming through an arrangement of the material to be learnt in a series of steps designed to lead the learners from the known to the unknown. In the discussion of the possible combination of correspondence teaching with programmed learning, the term programmed leaming is used to mean the process of learning through the arrangement of the material to be learnt in a systematic, sequential order. Mechanical, electronic or printed books in several formats are merely devices which put programmed material before the student. The actual instrument of teaching a not the machine but the arrangement of material.

Printed materials present the student with a degree of learner control, since they are portable. The well-structured information in a compact format, of a book can be accessed at a place appropriate to the individual learning pace and place of the student. The potential instructional efficiency of this tradational medium is further enhanced by its useability since it does not require have power supply, like the range of electronic media. The quality of lessons therefore should have high academic merit and should stimulate interest of the students to go to original texts in the subject concerned.