Copyright © 2002
Ken Tangen.. All rights reservedCritics charge that Distance Learning is simply a fad. After an initial rush of excitement, distance learning, they say, will fade away like the Hula-Hoop and pet rocks. They note that we have replaced the classroom lecture with a teleconferenced-....er, lecture. They worry that our high-tech toys haven’t really impacted instruction positively.
They believe that all we have managed to do is replace a lecture from a local professor who is a highly trained researcher with an incredible amount of specialized knowledge that only a dozen people in the world understand but can’t teach her way out of a paper bag, with an incredibly-expensive live satellite feed from a world-renown researcher with an incredible amount of specialized knowledge that only 6 people in the world understand, and who can’t teach his way into a paper bag. Or it’s charged that we have replaced our local creative genius with a professional actor, and we pretend that performing is the same as educating.
Some note that we have substituted correspondence courses with e-mail correspondence courses. Now instead of being unmotivated by boring self-paced materials where it took weeks to hear back from an underpaid, uninterested and unproductive instructor, we can be unmotivated by boring self-paced materials where it takes mere hours to hear back from an underpaid, uninterested and unproductive instructor. See, isn’t speed great?
And the critics say that we have replaced tedious slide shows and scribbled overheads with tedious PowerPoint presentations which all sprout the same inane background colors replete with tacky clipart graphics. They remind us that electrifying isn’t the same as improving.
But the critics are wrong. They don’t understand. We’re not simply plugging old pedagogy into new multi-wafered edge-mounted silicon boards shrink-wrapped in polyurethane. We’re not wrapping antiquated 12th-Century Oxford professorial rhetoric in spandex. What we are proposing is much more sinister.
So great is our heresy that even those of us involved in this technology cult have not given adequate thought to where our beliefs are leading us. Distance learning has many assumptions, many of which we have blindly accepted as gospel. We sing with the choir but we have taken a leap of faith without reading the doctrinal statement. I am not recommending these choices; indeed, I am trying to point out the danger of heading off in a direction before deciding where we want to be.
So, to be clear about our assumptions and the dangers they represent, I have gathered them together in this proclamation:
Distance learning is the process of presenting modularized, student-centered, branched content through a hierarchical, technologically-assisted, asynchronous, active delivery system which is planned by technology geeks and administered by non-educators who evaluate the success of the enterprise by rational, outcome-based criteria.
Modularized
Every subject matter includes clearly identifiable material which is used across courses. Mastery of these transferable skills is essential to student success. It is only natural then to develop targeted instructional exercises to insure student proficiency. These modules can be shared by instructors and can be used as introductory, review, or remedial assignments.
Naturally, this emphasis on modules can be taken too far. We might assume that smaller is better and try to modularize everything. In this digital age, it’s tempting to believe that there are no Gestalts. The unfortunate result would be a frenzy to subdivide analog educational principles into smaller and smaller segments like anally-fixated accountants hovering over last year’s tax returns.
Student-centered
A major shift in the philosophy of distance learning is the emphasis on the learner. This is a long-overdue change of focus. Education has too long been teacher-oriented with little thought given to the needs and concerns of students. But things are changing. Thanks to distance learning, education is no longer thought of as the broadcasting from one to many. Technology has made it possible to recreate education as an individual process of exploration and discovery. In distance learning, the student’s goals, time and convenience become of paramount importance.
Of course, in an effort to avoid imposing an inflexible structure on students, we run the risk of being a leaderless quagmire of indecision. Students don’t always know what they need, so it’s unfair for us to abdicate our responsibility. But in fact, this is a danger we have not yet faced. We are still so caught up in making education convenient for the teacher that we could use a good swing to the other end of the spectrum. Eventually, we’ll discover that education is a partnership of students and teachers. But until we achieve balance, let’s err on the side of student-centered learning.
Branched Content
The content of a course offered for distance learning is often planned with branches. Instead of a simple linear format, students are lead down paths which have multiple choice points. Individual branches can be assigned by instructors or selected by students for exploration.
The use of branching is one way in which distance learning can improve traditional classroom settings. Lectures prepared with branching in mind are more flexible and allow greater student-teacher interaction.
Although distance learning lends itself to many topics, it is not completely content independent. It tends to be fact oriented. While this criticism is also true for much classroom teaching, the separation of teacher and student limits the amount of supplemental modeling inherent in human interaction. Unless great care is taken, students catch the main points of the material but don’t get to participate in the unplanned learning activities of standing around the water cooler. Inter-student interaction and student-teacher interactions must be plentiful, flexible, and built into the system by thoughtful planning.
Hierarchical
Although it is not the sole force, distance learning is putting pressure on the traditional educational system to create a multi-tiered distribution system. In higher education this will mean another assault on tenure or, at least, a redefinition of what it is to be a professor.
It should be clear that we are headed toward education’s equivalent of the Managed Care system. This Managed Learning system is driven by the same forces as its medical counterpart: high cost, restricted access, limited resources, and the belief that business can fix it.
To counter rising educational costs, there will be increased pressure to get those costs under control by cutting wages or by finding people who will do the same thing for less money. Just as doctors were "supplemented" with physicians assistants and nurse practitioners, educational cost containment will emphasize intermediate levels of instruction givers.
Our aim will be Just In Time Teaching. We will suddenly discover that we have always believed that introductory courses don’t need full professors. No one should ever be taught by someone who knows substantially more about a subject than is absolutely necessary. We’ll hire non-tenured, part-time instructors are our line workers; after all, we’ll tell our critics, isn’t that better than using graduate teaching assistants like we do now? We won’t lower quality; we’ll simply insist that instructors stay a chapter ahead of the students. We’ll call it the Continuous Learning model.
Technology-assisted
Technology is an integral part of distance learning. Although sitting in the back of a 300-seat auditorium for a introductory lecture class may be a form of distance learning, technology usually is involved in most definitions of the term. Embracing satellite feeds, video links, teleconferencing, server-based, web-based, intra-net, inter-net, broadcast, e-mail, and cassette tapes, technology in distance learning is considered a helpful friend.
The greatest danger of this assumption is that we tend to technologize everything, whether it needs it or not. We use a multimedia, personal workstation with a scanner and large-screen monitor to write spelling words. In order to memorize multiplication tables, we replace flash cards with multidimensional universes drawn with vector graphics and matrix multiplication algorithms.
Asynchronous
One of truly remarkable potentials of distance learning is the ability to reach learners at their convenience. Although most courses aren’t fully asynchronous, the trend is to off-load increased amounts of material to e-mail, chat sessions, web pages and CD-ROM.
This trend should not be seen as an excuse for eliminating real human interaction. If anything, technology heightens an appreciation for real people. An asynchronous mode doesn’t mirror traditional instruction any more than e-mail has eliminated one-on-one conversation. Each has its advantages, and neither should be expected to triumph.
Active Delivery System
One of the advantages of a real classroom over its virtual cousin is the ability to shift directions seamlessly. In a normal class, the teacher can respond immediately to current issues and group dynamics. Teachers who use the Socratic method are particularly penalized by all distance learning media except 2-way video and audio.
The immediacy of being there can’t be completely compensated by response keypads and zooming video. It’s the difference between a live concert and being stuck in an overflow theater watching it on a big screen.
Yet it is possible for distance learning media to provide more active learning than the low-tech classroom. It’s not a function of technology; it’s a matter of planning. Too often live classroom presentations underutilized active learning strategies. Listening to a lecture is not active learning. Active learning requires input from the student, and this is something distance learning often provides.
Distance learning encourages instructors to plan carefully. Although this nudge does not guarantee active learning will be incorporated into the sessions, active learning rarely happens without planning. Hopefully, the process of planning courses for distance learning venues will help instructors design more learning action into all courses.
Techno-Geeks & Non-Educators
Distance learning has moved from a hobby of educators to big business. The advantage of this growth is that we take distance learning more seriously. The danger is that educators may not remain in charge of the process.
A good example is the cross between institutional research, corporate information and long-range planning. These areas are becoming increasingly interrelated. Institutional research and technology planning and management are integral parts of each other. Technology makes is easier to collect, store and analyze information. And how you ask the questions and collect the information impact the answers which can be found. Technology and information go together but both must serve a vision of where education is heading.
We should not surrender leadership of education to the people with the most toys. Knowing your bps from your mps is not as important as having a vision of where we should be headed. Leadership in distance learning is going to require hiring people who are gifted at teaching, technology and administration.
This is not an easy task. Finding multi-talented individuals is about as easy as finding people who are tall and short at the same time. But we need to make the effort to search them out. Without vision, we tend to purchase technology according to the institution’s checkbook balance instead of it’s long-range plan and mission statement.
Enterprise
Just as show business has become more business than show, education is following close behind. Schools are in trouble and the business community has discovered that it not only has something to say but that people are listening.
It is ironic that business is seen as the savior of education. It hasn’t been that long since the reverse was thought to be true. When business wanted to improve the quality of its workforce, it turned to education. Business used to think that education had all of the answers. That was okay; it happened to be the belief of education as well.
Things changed. Now education is scrambling to become more business-like. This trend will no doubt include a mass manufacturing of education. Like a national burger franchise, the emphasis will be put on consistency. The education may not be good but it won’t vary from site to site. Curricula, learning objectives and tests will be designed by centralized staffs, leaving the daily classroom chores to be done by less skilled employees.
As business takes control of education, marketing will become increasingly important. Competition will drive prices down, and wages will drop. There will be attempts to unionize instructors but ultimately they will fail.
This is not a conspiracy conceived by maniacal boardroom-types. It is an inevitable result of change. Like the industrial revolution, the technology revolution of the information age will impact lives positively for those who change and negatively for those still stuck in the previous era.
Rational, Outcome-based Criteria
The change from teacher-centered instruction which emphasizes inputs to student-centered learning which emphasizes outputs cannot be exaggerated. It is a monumental shift in thinking, and not everyone will want to make it.
Faculty will point out that not everything can be easily assessed. Administrators will counter that assessment processes are already in place (we call them tests, papers, projects and finals). If both sides approach the matter as a way of improving quality, the students will be well served. If both sides approach the matter as a battlefield for power gaming, all sides will lose.
Summary
Distance learning has the potential to revolutionize education in a positive way. It should not be seen as an excuse for digging further into indefensible positions. Ultimately, it is our assumptions about what we are doing and how we are to proceed which will determine the success of this endeavor.
copyright © 1998 Ken Tangen
Copyright © 2002
Ken Tangen.. All rights reserved