What's in the distance for distance education?

The slogan for my district is, “Every student prepared for a world yet to be imagined.” It was interesting this last year as I served on a committee that attempted to re-envision an educational system that would actually do just that, and yet our facilitator, a consultant named David Gregory from Gregory Denby and Associates, brought up the point that if we can’t predict the future then we can’t prepare our students for it. I feel that this is kind of the same situation that we are in for distance learning. If asked what distance learning would look like in ten years, five years ago I would have had a very different prediction for the future of distance learning than I would if asked the same question today. With the pace of technology inception/production/integration and the interplay between the lowered costs widespread adoption of different platforms, the future of distance education is somewhat difficult to predict. That having been said, I think that there are some predictions that can be made with some certainty.

First and foremost, the role of distance education will continue to grow as new technologies allow the connection of disparate groups of people. This is something that Siemens (Laureate, 2011) discusses. He also talks about the ways that new capabilities for communication and new tools that allow a variety of interaction types have led to more widespread acceptance of distance learning as a viable way to learn. With these new technologies universities, businesses, political organizations, etc. have the ability to economically address the needs of a wide variety of audiences in a multitude of ways (Laureate, 2011).

One of the biggest shifts that I see coming once new technologies allow for an increase in communication as well as an increase in the modes for communication is the fact that more and more powerful technologies are being produced in smaller, easier to carry packages. When looking at mobile computing and the amazing evolution of phones, it is not hard imagine that in the next ten years mobile devices will be able to substitute for powerful desktop machines. This is an idea supported by the Horizon Report and others. Though relatively new as a platform (so new in fact that the technology seems to have changed by the time empirical evidence on its effectiveness can be gathered and verified) mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have already made a fairly large change in the way that both students and educators of all levels are viewing content.

Tied to this increase in mobile communicative technologies is the idea that a wider audience now has access to the kinds of distance learning experiences previously only seen by a privileged few. As more schools, both higher education institutions and K-12 schools, begin to adopt distance learning as a core part of what they offer, more students will have the opportunity to experience distance learning and to form opinions about the effectiveness of distance education for them as individuals. This individual response to distance education is something Schmidt and Gallegos discuss in their study as being instrumental to the success or failure of a distance learning experience. As more students are exposed a greater percentage of them should find that they operate well in a distance learning environment, especially since many of these students will have been taught some strategies for self-direction earlier in their scholastic careers.

The biggest issue facing proponents of distance education right now though is not a question of technology, capability, or the potential for awesome learning experiences. The biggest issue facing distance education right now is the branding and marketing of distance learning as a substantial force in education with the rigor, relevance, and depth expected in traditional educational experiences. As it stands now this branding issue has led to some concerns about distance learning because of the perceived lack of quality (even prompting a section on the US Department of Education website that starts off with, “Not all online degree programs are diploma mills.”) The implication that distance learning can be less rigorous than traditional forms of education is something that needs to be addressed both by the students who have had successful experiences and the instructors and instructional designers who develop, implement, and evaluate learning experiences in a distance setting. In another ten years I do not think that this will be the case; I firmly believe that within the next ten years distance education will be a staple of learning environments as opposed to an offshoot of traditional schooling.

To do this though, distance education must continue to adapt to new methods, new technologies, and new expectations/capabilities of students. As an instructional designer, one has the responsibility to continue to enhance offerings according to research, pay attention to new capabilities, and speak up for the value of distance learning as a viable platform for a number of students who would potentially be unable to learn in another format due to spatial or chronological separation. While distance learning is a fact of life in America and many western countries, this is a new phenomenon in many “third world” countries around the globe. As technologies in these countries begin to allow it, many of these countries are beginning to look for educational opportunities that they would not otherwise have. The instructional designer, therefore, has the unique responsibility of both arguing for the power of distance learning as a viable resource for those who have become used/skeptical to it and arguing that it is a valuable resource for those who have never seen education delivered in any modified format.

As an individual currently involved with both instructional design in face-to-face, blended, and online learning environments, I see my charge as being an advocate for all types of learning. There are places and times for just about every educational platform/method available to us. At the end of the day, instructional design is really a balancing act of knowing when to use what strategies with which audiences and for what specific purposes. Once this has been determined it is also the role of the instructional designer to explain and promote the learning experiences (especially distance learning experiences) that he/she has designed so that others will begin to see that they have been given a powerful learning opportunity. This is especially important with distance learning experiences so that they are no longer just considered convenient but also valuable. Students need to be able to consume these educational experiences, but they also need to be able to provide feedback and guidance on the requirements of distance learning experiences. I see it as my duty to bring a whole new level of consciousness to high school and adult students. Once we empower the students of tomorrow with the ability to shape their learning experiences through thorough analytical and evaluative processes, they just might truly be able to prepare themselves for the world that they imagine and instructional designers will be able to craft learning experiences that encourage and support them.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). “The future of distance education”. 

A Paradigm Shift or Simply Something Shiny?

It is interesting that in a world of K-12 standardized testing that is dumbing down our youths' natural curiosity, higher education institutions are offering learning to the public for the simple pleasure of learning. Is just offering content the same as providing an education though? This is the crux of the matter in terms of instructional design, and it is no small question to ask. The idea that teaching is something that requires little skill or preparation is an old idea, as Bernard Shaw tried to point out in 1903, yet even in a digital age there is more to learning than simply being shown content. So what is the validity of the design of courses being offered through iTunesU and the like for free online?


To answer this question I looked at some of the courses offered by Stanford University through iTunesU. Specifically, I looked at a course on Virgil's Aeneid. The content of the course is very good if one strictly looks at the information being presented. The professor is well informed and provides a lot of information on the topic in a series of five segments. It is important to note that the information contained in the class was not the item I was looking at though; I was looking to see if this course offered high quality instructional design of the kind that Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2009) describe.


Unfortunately, on that account, the course failed. While the average user now has access to the information about the Aeneid and though the information was presented by a scholar, the course itself was little more than a lecture recorded in a face-to-face setting. In this sense, this was not a course at all but rather the equivalent of a recorded book online. Without any visuals to help the learner, without interactivity, without feedback, and without assessments, all items referenced by Simonson et. al (2009), it is difficult to see how this is actually an online course. There are no outside references to additional resources and there is not even a link provided to the actual work being discussed...even though a five second search on Google showed that the Aeneid is available for free from the Gutenberg project.


While a quick search on the Internet can turn up any number of assignments for this work of literature (storyboards, summer reading, etc.) none are provided from the actual institution offering the course. It is hard to see how offering a simple set of five two hour lectures is good instructional design. In addition to the glaring issues of this course, providing the information in a block of two hours is itself questionable. As Dills and Hernandez (2008) explain, classes that meet more often provide better results for student learning. While the length of the online offering may be somewhat mitigated by the fact that students can pause, rewind and fast-forward through the lecture, I would postulate that by structuring the course in two hour segments the ability of students to interact with the content is limited by the design of the lecture.


Even, Kupczynski, Ice, Wiesenmayer and McCluskey (2010) who point out that direct instruction can be an important educational tool in distance learning do not discount the active role of feedback and interaction with the instructor in the learning processes of students. With many of the Stanford courses, and indeed many of the other online "courses" offered in iTunesU, all you are really getting is content delivery of face to face lectures. A lecture does not included any interactivity for the learner and therefore he/she becomes a passive party in the room. While this can happen in a regular classroom, the student on a roster is still able to interact with the instructor in meaningful ways if he or she desires to. With the lecture based offerings on iTunesU the learner is only able to get out of the class what they are able to figure out and understand on their own.  I wonder if this kind of course offering will lead to a misinformed populace over time as people who think they are capable of understanding scholarly approaches to topics are partaking of the offering and then redistributing their own understanding of the information on the Internet as stated facts.


In any case, higher education institutions providing content for the general population for free is a very exciting prospect. I hope that over time the content will be provided using sound instructional design principles in addition to the direct instruction that is currently being found online. I have faith that as technology use and capabilities expand we will see additional models of information become available online and as more instructional designers become skilled in multiple aspects of the process of instructional design, more media rich modules will find their way onto the screens of learners. I hope that over time the decision to support curiosity will eventually lead the general population into support of learning for learning's sake in our public schools because then we might get to the point where students could produce meaningful content for the masses. Imagine a world where students were taught to produce high quality content for others; they would be learning to be critical of both the content and format of online instruction and it just might help make a general population qualified to utilize and improve a resource like the iTunesU of today.


References:


Dills, A. K., & Hernandez-Julian, R. (2008). Course Scheduling and Academic Performance. Economics of Education Review, 27(6), 646-654. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.


Kupczynski, L., Ice, P., Wiesenmayer, R., & McCluskey, F. (2010). Student Perceptions of the Relationship between Indicators of Teaching Presence and Success in Online Courses. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 9(1), 23-43. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.


Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.