The Future of Distance Education

As this course in Distance Learning has come to an end I have been asked to reflect upon the future of distance education and my role in the promotion of distance learning. I don’t believe that distance education or online learning will ever over take traditional learning I simply think that the choices for learners to find an optimal learning environment will grow.  

As technology progresses distance education will also grow and become more common and have the ability to provide more educational opportunities for more people.  Yet even though, “rapid advances in information technology are reshaping the learning styles of many students in higher education" (Dede, 2005) and “as more technology resources are becoming available to educational settings, more students are becoming involved in learning at a distance” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2009) we as Instructional Designers must first understand our learners to ensure that we are selecting technology and its uses that will be most effective in fulfilling our learners needs.

I believe that as distance learning grows that individualized learning curriculum will be more of the educational focus and teachers will transition from lecturer to facilitator/tutor.  Simonson et al stated (p.126), “The instructional environment should be viewed as a system, a relationship among and between all the components of that system- the instructor, the learners, the material, and the technology.” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2009) I believe this to be true but see parts of this relationship more as a parent to child than as on an equal plane.  For instance, Simonson et al also pointed out, (p.125) “Analysis of the cognitive abilities of the class allows the instructor to observe how students relate to the content of the lesson.” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2009) So an instructor can now base the design of a lesson or content material around the learners’ abilities and engagement level.  

In 10 to 20 years I believe a hybrid/blended learning model will be most predominant especially in academia; a hybrid/blended learning model gives more students the effective strategies of both traditional and online learning environments, thus giving more students more opportunities  to find which learning environment works best for individualized needs.

I believe that my studies in instructional design have supported my personal experiences in different classroom environments.  With my experiences in traditional, hybrid/blended and online learning environments, both as a student and as a teacher, I believe that I can analyze each learning/training scenario from each perspective and help clients select the best options for their learners.  I also believe that these different perspectives will help me to advocate for different forms of distance learning and help others to recognize that distance learning comes in many different forms and levels.

I believe the best way to be a positive force for distance education is to become an expert in a niche market or area of need; brining focus to my professional beliefs, techniques and strategies.  I would really like to establish a niche of converting traditional learning curriculum into effective distance learning models and provide the supporting training and professional development.

Resources

Dede, C. (2005). Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 28(1), 7-12. 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.

The Value of Open Courses

This week I explored one of the Open Yale courses to analyze the pre-planning and design of its instructional design.  I specifically reviewed the Biomedical Engineering course, found at http://oyc.yale.edu/biomedical-engineering/frontiers-in-biomedical-engineering/

The Open Yale Biomedical Engineering course is one of several open courses offered on the Yale website and is an amazing opportunity to take college level courses for free and in your own learning time frame.  This open course would be a perfect fit for retirees interested in learning new developments in particular industries or for students who do not need the college credit but wish to have the knowledge found in the available course.  This would not be a good option for a student who has not had prior experience in the featured industry or needs to gain the information for application purposes, such as a job setting.

The Open Yale Biomedical Engineering course is basically course management (Simonson, 2007, p.239) with the lecture materials posted to an online Course Management System (CMS) for other students to utilize to self-teach themselves asynchronously.  Each session of the course offers the session summaries with discussion questions and the recorded lecture; this course does not include the textbook or information on obtaining the textbook.  This course would be considered to be very teacher-centered and not utilizing the opportunities to be learner-centered that distance learning has to offer. (Simonson, 2007, pp.231- 232)  This course has all the information available but lacks distance learning strategies to increase students’ chances of successfully completing the course for application purposes.  The course does a nice job explaining the course content and gives a brief description of student requirements to complete the course but does not give any prerequisites for the course or any other background information that may preface the course’s content. 

The main feature of the course that caught my attention as a good distance learning technique was the ability to receive the lecture content in three different forms: text (transcript), audio, or video.  These different forms of the lecture are a good way to accommodate different learning styles as well as different students’ learning preferences. (Simonson, 2007)

So this open course format that is utilized for this course does give the opportunity of exposure to information that may not have been available in the past but does not show extensive instructional design pre-planning to be an effective distance learning course.

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