Re-defining distance learning: Week 1 blog

9/11/10 Redefining distance learning - Week 1 blog entry

• Your personal definition and observations of distance learning before starting this course. Consider what you learned about distance learning this week and how this learning has influenced your personal definition.
  
  
• Before starting this course, I thought of distance learning simply as what I have been doing with Walden and that which I researched prior to starting a master’s program, taking online courses. Therefore, I thought of distance as a rather recent development or at least since computer technology has become available to the masses in terms of cost and accessibility. I had never classified all of the other categories of learning outside of the traditional classroom as “distance learning.”
  
  

• Speaking metaphorically, I also thought of it as the “Cinderella” of the education family – a hidden beauty full of potential but often looked at in a condescending way by those in power. I have developed this attitude due to the response I’ve received from school administrators with whom I’m have to fight to continue my education. Due to my husband’s job as an athletic director that requires him to keep erratic hours that vary widely in any given season and from week to week, I am the parent responsible for all of our children’s activities and supervision during the school year. As a result, I cannot commit to being in a classroom in a specific location even just one night a week. I do find it ironic that my reason for turning to online courses is a reflection of the reason for the popularity of Anna Eliot Ticknor’s Society to Encourage Studies at Home back in 1898 (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). So, more than one hundred years later, all of these cohort learning opportunities, including those brought into our schools by our administrators, have never worked for my circumstances. The only opportunity I have had to continue my professional growth is through online courses that offer asynchronous learning. Yet, I have met resistance every time I have approached an administrator about my desire to continue my education through online courses. This style of learning has not earned the reputation for quality that traditional classes provide. However, in comparing what I’m doing in my classes, online, as compared to my peers sitting in a cohort, I’ve had better quality teachers and more relevant instructions and projects than they have. What is it going to take until administrators catch up with the times and recognize the value of this type of education?
  
  

• Your revised definition, which combines your previous thoughts about distance learning with new information you learned this week.
  
  
• What a shock I had when looking at this week’s time line and noting how far back distance education actually goes (1833) and what it includes (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010)! Of course, it includes correspondence schools and transmission of lessons by television and radio (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010); however, I had never heard the term “distance learning” applied to these mediums; therefore, I never considered them as such. My own students make up credits through correspondence classes where material is sent back and forth through the mail, but even that appellation has been shortened to just the name of the school, rather than the method of delivering and receiving learning materials. No one gives a second thought to learning across a distance when done through the mail.
  
  

• I also had never considered the wide variety of technologies involved with distance learning prior to this week - from the telegraph to the television and from satellite to the Internet – nor the institutions (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010) involved in laying the foundation for the level of acceptance and quality available today (another reason to love Duke other than its basketball team!). Who would have thought Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania would be early leaders? Yet, it is exactly the characteristics unique to those states that would require innovative responses to the learning needs of their inhabitants.
  
  

• All in all, I would say that my definition of distance learning is much more inclusive and broader now than it was at the beginning of the week. As a result of learning what it has incorporated in the past, I have a wider vision of what the future may bring.
  
  

• A summary of your vision for the future of distance learning as it continues on a path of evolution and change.
  
  
• It is difficult for me to predict the technological innovations that will occur that will impact distance learning because technology is expanding exponentially. If I were to make an educated guess, however, I would think that the changes in technology will continue to evolve to allow even more interactivity with simpler and simpler interfaces to encourage non-technologically oriented learners to be successful.
  
  

• As far as the impact in secondary education, where my concerns focus, we are just now in the process of recognizing and formalizing the 21^st Century Literacies that students are going to need to succeed (NCTE, 2008). This must become pervasive at the post-secondary school level before it trickles down to the secondary level where I teach. Until colleges demand these skills from their students, I do not think that the majority of secondary schools will respond quickly. This may happen sooner than I expect though if it is true, as stated in the article “The Evolution of Distance Education:Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web,” that economic and access issues are driving an explosion of growth in this area (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008).
  
  

• In addition, perhaps politics will play a role in moving this kind use of technology down to the secondary level. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, speaking on July 15, 2010 at the College Board AP Conference, said that we must stop thinking of high school graduation as an “end point” and instead, consider it a “launching pad for further growth and lifelong learning for students.” He went on to call the current structure of schools outdated and not serving its student populations in meeting the needs of today’s world (Duncan, 2010). If valid school reform would truly move to the forefront of the political agenda, distance education could become an invaluable tool hooking up students with opportunities that might not otherwise exist.
  
  
  

References

Duncan, Arne. (2010, July 15). [Address]. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's Remarks at the College Board AP Conference on The Three Myths of High School Reform. [Transcript]. Retrieved September 11, 2010, from http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/three-myths-high-school-reform-secretary-arne-duncans-remarks-college-board-ap-confere

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Distance learning timeline continuum [Graph]. Retrieved September 7, 2010 from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4442084&Survey=1&47=3976079&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66–70

NCTE. (2008). NCTE positions statement: The NCTE definition of 21st Century literacies. National Council of Teachers of English, Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition