Distance Education: New Meaning with Changing Era

Before this course, I was opportune to take a course from the United Kingdom from Cameroon about 10 years ago, where course materials were shared via postal systems, and students were expected to self-study with the help and guidance of a local subject matter expert (SME) and take a one-time paper-based test. According to Johnston (2020), this form of distance education is known as correspondence courses, and its use dates to 1728. This paper-based test was facilitated by an external body in Cameroon, with roles being exam administration and supervision in designated centers. The support of the SME was a personal step left at the learners' discretion. For learners who could not have a local SME guide, feedback was only shared with learners after the one-time assessment was taken in the form of scores and grades. This learning and teaching approach was understood by me as distance learning simply due to the geographically spatial separation between instructor and learner.  It did not seem to involve whether there was any interaction between learner and instructor aided by technology. This idea of distance education fits only one aspect of Keegan’s (1980) definition of distance education, as noted by Saykılı (pg.3, 2018), which states that “the separation of teacher and learner which distinguishes it from face-to-face (F2F) lecturing”.

About 3 years later, the course delivery institution modified the educational approach to have text course materials delivered electronically, with learners accessing these electronically after subscribing. Yet again, no interaction with other students was available, and no designated instructor was available to guide teaching and learning. Any form of learning guidance was a self-effort for the learner. More so, there was no formative evaluation to evaluate if learning was going as intended (Morrison et al., 2019).  With this modified approach, learners could take a one-time paper-based assessment or a computer-based one.

This experience made me think of distance learning as involving no interaction with other learners in a course, no designated instructor needed to provide thorough learning guidance from the institution, and courses and learning evaluations could be delivered using electronic media. Reflecting on it, the central idea that was key in my understanding of this experience as distance education was the geographical distance between the learner and instructor in a formal learning setting, with the means of delivering content through postal systems and later on with the use of computer internet (Johnston, 2020). Saykılı( 2018) identifies this type of distance education as transactional, with limited or no interaction between the learner and instructor with rigid structure and instructor control of the learning materials.

Of course, distance learning is constantly evolving and, from my experience, will keep changing as learners and instructors find new ways to integrate pedagogy and technology (Walden University, LLC, n.d). According to (Sangrà et al., 2012), distance learning is a term often interchangeably used as e-learning, which encompasses an approach to teaching and learning, representing all or part of the educational theories applied, that is based on the use of electronic media to teach, learn, communicate, and interact. In my experience learning at Walden University, I can identify some aspects that align well with the inclusive term of e-learning involving the separation of teacher and learner,  the influence of an educational organization which distinguishes it from private study, the use of technical media, a mix of prints, videos, and audios to unite teacher and learner and carry the educational content of the course, the provision of asynchronous two-way communication where learners may benefit from or even initiate dialogue with peers and instructor (Saykılı, 2018). 

See Figure 1 below for a mind map of my definition of distance education.

                                                    FIG 1: Mind Map of Distance Education

To conclude, the definition of distance education will evolve as technology, teaching, and learning needs change. Course designers must be keen on developing and sustaining educational environments that meet the benefits of a sound curriculum and use appropriate technology to continue improving and enhancing teaching and learning in ways that align best with learners’ needs (Johnston, 2020).

 

 

 

 

 

 

References.

Keegan, D. (1988). Problems in defining the field of distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 2(2), 4–11.

Johnston, J. P. (2020). Creating better definitions of distance education. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 23(2), 1-6.

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., Morrison, J. R., & Kalman, H. K. (2019). Designing effective instruction (8th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Sangrà, A., Vlachopoulos, D., & Cabrera, N. (2012). Building an inclusive definition of e-learning: An approach to the conceptual framework. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, [S.l.], 13(2), p. 145-159, ISSN 1492-3831.

Saykılı, A. (2018). Distance education: Definitions, generations, key concepts and future directions. International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 5(1), 2-17

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (n.d.).  Distance education: The next generation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu