Distance Education Reflection

My Past Experience

My experience with distance learning is as both a teacher and as a student. I’ve been teaching face to face on campus classes for almost 20 years and only recently in the last couple of years started teaching both hybrid and online courses. As a traditional teacher, it was a challenge initially and I originally was somewhat resistant to teaching online. In retrospect, it was due mostly to the structure and reasoning of the school I taught at that tried to initiate it. Moller’s statement was correct that some institutions reasoning is solely to save money and they disguise it by saying they are being cutting edge and evolving when in fact they are thinking of assumed economic gains (Moller, 2008 pt.1). This made me very apprehensive as well as several other teachers I worked with at the time and so it met with a lot of resistance. My initial definition of distance learning was very general and always pertained to online courses through a college or grade school.

My Experience Update

So far during this week, I’ve learned a lot of things, or more accurately, I’m thinking differently. I never really thought of all the types of distance learning there are or all the different things that are considered distance learning, much less all of the seemingly interchangeable terminology. Simonson categorizes the terms describing distance learning as E-learning, virtual education, online learning, and distance education (Simonson 2015). I’ve personally used all of these terms but never realized their differences until now. Imagining doing courses by mail correspondence in the 1800s is incredible, not to mention time-consuming. Today’s options of email, live lesson feeds, recorded videos and instantaneous communication dwarfs the technology of yesterday.

Dr. Michael Simonson (n.d.) states that one of the characteristics of distance education is that it’s institutionally based, not self-studied. This is something that now that it’s stated seems obvious, but something I wouldn’t have thought of initially to define. Now that I’m an online student and as well an online teacher, I’ve drastically changed my mind and realized that it’s the delivery, quality and intent that makes a good online program. If it weren’t for the online courses, many students such as myself wouldn’t have the opportunity to continue their education. That being said, I think there is always room for improvement and that appears to be where the IDs come in.

My Vision of Distance Learnings' Future

In my opinion from what I’ve learned as a student and what I’ve experienced as a teacher, distance learning is evolving and reaching out greater than it ever has before. Technology has allowed it to reach villages and teach using IPads, use phones to collaborate with peers instantaneously and give students a great option to traditional learning. I’ve seen different ways of learning that were impossible like the augmented reality of the hololens teaching medical students using holograms and I’ve learned about research and learning methodologies with peers I never would have met otherwise while working multiple jobs. Distance learning is fantastic but not without its problems.

Some of the things I believe need to be corrected were brought up in this week’s resources, others weren’t. In this week’s resources, using distance learning to save money and not doing a true assessment beyond the base line goal to see if the results are successful is a very important and real problem that I’ve witnessed firsthand. As an ID, this is going to be one of my top priorities to make sure I can effectively put the information in a format that will show more than just economics in the short term.

Another problem that I’ve personally tried to address is that all thought distance learning shouldn’t be identical to face to face instruction, there still needs to be a proper adaptation of the merging of what makes online courses effective and what makes face to face effective. Often times I’ve seen course results from student’s projects being less advanced from online students than face to face because of a strict let’s keep it different policy. This can be detrimental if pushed inappropriately to the content being taught and it’s an easy fix. As an ID, I want to make sure that I don’t forget the strengths of both to make powerful instruction that works for as many learners as possible. I believe this is the future of Distance Learning.

References

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., & Zvacek, S. (2015). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education

Chapter 2, “Definitions, History, and Theories of Distance Education” (pp. 31–40 only)

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 1: Training and development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70–75.

“Distance Learning Timeline Continuum” (n.d.)

This multimedia, interactive timeline chronicles the evolution of distance learning from 18332009.

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Distance education: The next generation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu