A final reflection on the future of distance learning

The future of Distance Learning

George Siemens declares that, “Distance education benefits corporations by allowing them to interact with different offices around the world” (Laureate Education Inc., n.d.).  This is a well-known fact that is embraced with confidence in the corporate sector.  Conference calling, Telepresence ™, screen sharing, and proprietary software are all used to simulate two-way communication and provide the ability for collaborative work to be done virtually in both an asynchronous and real-time format.  People are working remotely more than ever, moving to often-exotic destinations and able to carry out the functions of their roles in the workplace.  Companies are saving millions on airline costs; reducing travel for employees.  Corporate training and development is quickly being transformed into scalable e-learning packages and asynchronous delivery.  In fact, the enthusiasm and demand for e-learning development far outstrips the available supply of people with the competency to develop it…” (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008a, p. 71).  This is the new reality of the future for corporate distance learning, and the educational sector is following suit at a rapid pace.

Perhaps this rush to distance learning is because of speedy technology development, or perhaps the change is because of the changing needs of neo-millennial learners (Dede, 2005), but whatever the case may be, in the future, the web will be facilitating the lion’s share of distance learning and instruction.  Public perception however is still developing an opinion around the value ad for distance education.  George Siemens believes that this is due to a level of comfort with the technologies employed, stating, “If we manage with learners to bridge that gap of comfort…so that they experience the environment, they’ll take to it” (Laureate Education Inc., n.d.).  Dede (2005) on the other hand believes that shifting learning styles because of technology use in other areas of life will prompt significant shifts in the desires of learners for a “mediated immersion” experience (p. 7).  Not only do learning styles call for change says Dede (2005), but also, “Increasingly, people want educational products and services tailored to their individual needs rather than one-size-fits-all courses of fixed length, content and pedagogy” (p. 8).  Dabbagh (2007) affirms this cultural shift in describing the needs and attributes of successful online learners.  She states that increasingly people learning in online spaces have a “need for affiliation”, and therefore seek out opportunities for collaboration and social presence while on the web, as opposed to the former notion of the independent distance learner (p. 220). 

Because of this shift, I believe that the higher learning industry will lead the way in ushering in a significant change in perceptions about distance learning for the education sector.  As organizations such as MIT, Stanford, and Yale begin to provide more Massive Online Open Courses and the call for validation of user participation is heard, I think we’ll see less notoriety being afforded to degrees from only brick & mortar institutions, and more respect for varied certifications.  Other universities will continue to jump on the distance-education and Open-Courseware bandwagon not only to compete with each other but also with the growing number of private online-universities that are taking a large portion of the student population that is looking for ways to save and finding that distance learning is a huge value.  Right now, the main barrier to changing public perception is still around the ability for distance-education to compete with face-to-face education in the area of communication and interaction (Schmidt & Gallegos, 2001).  As more effort moves that direction however, the active learning opportunities afforded in distance education could be a game changer for the public’s perception and the higher education industry as a whole.  Moller, Foshay, and Huett (2008b) declare that  “distance education could eventually be the point of leverage to develop and to propagate performance-based quality standards throughout post-secondary education” (p. 67).  If that happens—where public perception is that not only are distance education platforms providing better active-learning pedagogy, similar sense of social presence through communication technologies, and a cheaper and more convenient way to educate-- then brick & mortar universities are going to have to mothball most of their buildings and invest in server space. 

A lot of the debate of whether this will happen or not rests on the instructional designer.  Can the ID’s, and the institutions that employ them learn from the gaming industry for aesthetics and the creation of learning based MUVE’s? Can ID’s take lessons from social networking to create fluid virtual collaboration spaces?  Can ID’s take advantage of growing bandwidth and open-source content to provide excellent multi-media content that is as engaging for the purposes of learning as it is entertaining?  Can rich and engaging problem-based learning modules be created that motivate learners and build relevance in their work? It is up to the ID to adapt to these changing “pedagogical underpinnings” of distance-learning interfaces, and not to become fixated on the technology, thus invoking Clark’s (1983, cited by Simonson, Smaldino, Albrecht and Zvacek, 2012) “technology as vehicle” warnings (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008b).  “Thus, a major challenge for the

ID field is to get faculty and learners to recognize the value of sound instructional design regardless of the medium of delivery or the theoretical framework used to define it” (p. 220). 

Whether it be Michael Moore’s idea of “transactional distance”, Keegan’s idea of “intersubjectivity”, or Borje Holmberg’s “emotional involvement”, almost all of the prominent distance-learning theorists recognize that the essence of what makes education different from instruction is a level of social interaction that promotes and support cognitive development. (Simonson et. al., 2012)  For all that distance-learning platforms are becoming, this one area alone stands to be the difference maker of whether distance education take root and perceptions change about the value of distance learning in the education sector.  As an educator myself who has experienced the “common zeal” (Keegan, 1996, cited by Simonson et. al., 2012, p. 54) in the face-to-face classroom, I’m waiting to experience it from a distance.  As a future instructional designer, I can change perceptions by how I utilize emerging technologies in course design to increase the level of two-way communication so that learners are “affiliated” (Dabbagh, 2007), and connected in ways that come as close to the face-to-face experience as possible.  Through the promotion of the blended learning environment, which I think is the best of both worlds, or by designing interactive synchronous distance experiences, I feel that I can at least try and improve the learner’s sense of social presence.  By providing timely feedback to student work as a facilitator, I can help maintain motivation for the learner and add value to the distance learning experience. 

This course has given me a solid theoretical framework with which I have synthesized a great number of the issues and “pedagogical underpinnings” unique to distance education.  I feel more confident in my own distance education as a result, and more willing to promote the experience to others. 

References:

Dabbagh, N. (2007). The online learner: Characteristics and pedagogical implications.Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 7(3). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol7/iss3/general/article1.cfm

Dede, C. (2005). Planning for neomillennial learning styles. Educause Quarterly, 28(2), 7-12.

Schmidt, E., & Gallegos, A. (2001). Distance learning: Issues and concerns of distance learners. Journal of Industrial Technology, 17(3).

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Laureate Education Inc., (n.d.) The Future of Distance Education [video]. Author: George Siemens.  Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2818555_1%26url%3D

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008a). 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.

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

Situated Learning in Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC’s) - An analysis of an MIT MOOC

A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting a 14 year old from London who had already developed 4 iPhone apps and made about $100 a day in download income.  Being a middle-school teacher at the time, I have to say I was intrigued both by his apparent genius but also his uncharacteristic motivation for someone his age.  As I got to talking to him however, it became clear that while those things were partially true, the real truth is that he had learned how to develop iPhone apps from watching a Stanford Professor on iTunesU explain it all to him…for free. 

http://wpuploads.appadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2013-01-24_09-21-17-642x252.png

And this was my introduction to Massively Online Open Course’s. 

I admit that I went home and downloaded the exact same course as this young man had, but due to the lack of time and the lack of an iPhone I didn’t really follow in his footsteps.   As an instructional designer, and somewhat of an international humanitarian however, the idea of MOOC’s has my mind spinning.  Even from the philosophical perspective of education and access has been blown to bits by this recent technological development by some of the most elite universities in the world.

For this blog I’ve chosen to take a look at the MIT Open Courseware site and its related link to EdX, which is a similar in its MOOCness but with the added bonus of looking and feeling like a real asynchronous course with other learners in a fixed timeframe, but without the cost. 

MIT Open Courseware

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/

In general this site hosts hundreds of stand-alone (considered to be completely asynchronous, and without student-to-student, or student-to-instructor interaction) courses which can be selected through a series of filters for subtopics, specialties, and certain other course features such as videos, student exemplary work, assessments, lecture notes, syllabus, interactive simulations, online textbooks, etc. 

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/index.htm

I chose a course entitled Nuclear Systems Design Project, which was chosen because it contained the largest number of filter items under the topic of science.  Although this may be misleading as to the usual level of quality in instructional design, I wanted to have a look at a stand-alone course with the most features for comparison to a truly online-distance education course.

Context:  “This capstone course is a group design project involving integration of nuclear physics, particle transport, control, heat transfer, safety, instrumentation, materials, environmental impact, and economic optimization. It provides opportunities to synthesize knowledge acquired in nuclear and non-nuclear subjects and apply this knowledge to practical problems of current interest in nuclear applications design. Each year, the class takes on a different design project; this year, the project is a power plant design that ties together the creation of emission-free electricity with carbon sequestration and fossil fuel displacement. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.” (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/).

Theories of design:

Situated Learning (Bransford, Sherwood, Hasselbring,

Kinzer, & Williams, 1990; Lave & Wenger, 1990, cited by Belltrain).

Learning audience:  This is an elective capstone undergraduate course for students at MIT enrolled in an Energy Studies Minor.  We can assume that these students have had some engineering, design, and math courses but as evidenced by one of the goals to “Think Like an Engineer” it would be reasonable to conclude that many will be learning a good deal of metacognitive and process skills as well as the content about nuclear reactors.

Does the course appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment? How so?

It is debatable whether one would consider this site, “shovelware” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albrecht & Zvacek, 2012) a term used for courses that were once used only in the Face-to-face educational setting and then repurposed into and online course.  It does have potential as its own online course, however separated from an instructor and other enrolled students it seems fairly impossible to complete—even as a self-study program—due to it’s nature as a collaborative design project.  On the other hand, I can tell it has been planned for the potential use in a distance-learning environment because it contains a special section called “Teaching this Course” in which hyperlinks take the user to pages which include text and video of the actual instructors, and follow a conversation of how they teach this specific course.  Some of the topics in this section include heading such as:

• Developing the Project Assignment, 
• Guiding Students Through Each Phase of the Course, 
• Tailoring the Course to Student's Needs, 
• Teaching Students to Be Engineers, 
• Teaching Communication, 
• Making Content Tangible

This gives evidence that this course was created for “reusability” which is a key feature of instruction design that has followed a systematic process (Simonson, et. al., 2012, p. 153).  Whether that “reusability” would be in the F2F setting or the online setting would take about the same amount of work from what I can tell.  All that would be needed for a distance-learning conversion is a course facilitator and a CMS and the rest of the course could be uploaded for easy integration and implementation with a live group of distance-learners.  I could also see the course project reworked and converted into a digital simulation project that would incorporate what Dede (2005) calls an “Alice-in-Wonderland, Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE) interfaces in which participant’s avitars interact with computer based agents and digital artifacts in virtual contexts” (p. 8).

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/index.htm

A good deal of programming has been done outside of a CMS in order to make the course homepage look visually welcoming and designed for the end-user experience—complete with course descriptions, and links to additional resources within the site.  As I sniffed around the “Featured Sites” tab I noticed a link to MIT’s MOOC’s that are especially for high-school students.  Although a little high-level this course may be re-useable by community colleges or even 4-year universities.

 The course homepage also includes a navigation bar on the left side of the page with links to the crucial components of the course.   A complete syllabus and calendar, which outlines goals and objectives, prerequisites, the timeline, deliverables, the tasks and responsibilities, course structure and grading considerations, are included.

The calendar gives topics and due dates for project components, but interestingly these are not tied to actual dates, but instead to days in the course cycle, thus making the course no-longer fixed in time, but reusable from any start and end date.

All readings are hyperlinked to downloadable PDF’s.

Lecture videos and notes are included with hyperlinks within the course calendar.  In many cases the notes are simply text announcements to students about preparation for lectures, recitation, etc.

A few assignments are listed but no rubrics were evident.

Student exemplars of the course project are included as videos and PowerPoint slides

A few technology tools are listed with links to downloadable software.

Does the course follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in your course textbook?

Using Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner, and Duffy’s (2001, in Simonson et. al., 2012, p. 179)) seven lessons for online instruction as a rubric (1 to 4, with 4 being the highest rating), here is how the MIT course would stand up:

Rating	Lesson
1	“Instructors should provide clear guidelines for interaction with students.” The task rubrics were nonexistent and although there was a section about “communicating” I did not find much in the way of guidelines for interaction
3	“Well-designed discussion assignments facilitate meaningful cooperation among students. Because this was not designed as a distance course to begin with it is assumed that students will be cooperating with each other face-to-face.  As Dr. Piskurich indicates (Laureate Education Inc., n.d.) face-to-face or on the job training is always the best course design method.  Therefore, although not specifically designed for a distance learning context, it can be assumed through the task descriptions, the context, and evidenced by the final projects, that meaningful cooperation did occur.
4	“Students should present course projects.” The very nature of the course is a collaborative design project.
3	“Instructors need to provide two types of feedback: information feedback and acknowledgement feedback.” It is clear from the syllabus that students were to submit monthly journal entries, and monthly group presentations of progress (therefore chunking the project into smaller sizes).  It can be concluded that through this formative assessment process, feedback was given to students.
4	“Online courses need deadlines” As mentioned above, the calendar indicates a timeline with due dates, although for the MOOC those deadlines are not dates, but instead days in the learning cycle.  Clear deadlines and a timeline are included.
4	“Challenging tasks, sample cases, and praise for quality work communicate high expectations.”
3	“Allowing students to choose project topics incorporates diverse views into online courses.” Because this is a design task, the problem is open ended with a few constraints.  Students got to choose which phase of the reactor they would work on and then they were able to make design decisions together to solve the problem
3.14	Overall average viability as an online course…not bad!

The course does well to include detailed specifics about the course through the syllabus, calendar, lecture videos and notes, etc.  With a little retooling I could see it being a well-designed course since so much of the pedagogy and activities have already been designed for maximum engagement.

Evaluation rubrics and quizzes would need to be developed and a structure for interactivity (such as wikis, discussion groups, etc.) would need to be created and facilitated, but in general the content and course activities have been designed with sound principles in mind. 

Did the course designer implement course activities that maximize active learning for the students?

            Because the course is a capstone design course, the entire course is centered around a group project where students essentially work together to “design a complete power plant from a systems point of view. This plant must be able to both generate electricity and produce hydrogen and liquid synthetic fuels as outputs. Which outputs these are and how they are to used is up to you to decide. This should be a conceptual design, characterized by sufficient detail to demonstrate that the design is technically feasible, licensable, and economically competitive” (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/Syllabus/). 

            Additionally the goals of the course indicate that interactivity and problem-solving in a teamwork setting are of utmost importance.  Again, from the syllabus: “This course aims to teach you how to work on an open-ended, "no right answer" problem that requires choosing design parameters, optimizing them, and backing up your judgment as a team. Individual work as well as teamwork will be required to successfully complete this project” (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/Syllabus/).

            Clearly this course is designed with group-based, active-learning pedagogies in mind.  To quote Beldarrain (2006), “Situated learning theory proposes that real-life problem solving should be a collaborative task, empowering learners to become part of a learning community. Anchored instruction seeks to build problem-solving skills by anchoring instruction around a situation or problem (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993). Students solve the problem presented in context by role-playing and interacting with both the content and their peers. Online distance education can integrate emerging technologies such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts to achieve the type of communication and interaction that would support either of these learning theories, among others” (p. 147).  As evidenced by the tasks and roles for students in the syllabus, it is clear that this form of role-play and interaction is present all situated around a real-world problem.  To see student work examples of the final project go visit http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-033-nuclear-systems-design-project-fall-2011/projects/final-project-presentation

However, since we can assume that the originally course was designed for a F2F environment and then published online as a MOOC that involves no coordinated effort or structure to maintain student-to-student interaction, then presumably the course project would be impossible to complete as a stand-alone unless you could identify several other course users were willing to complete the coursework along with you.

References:

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance education trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education 27(2), 139-153.

Dede, C. (2005). Planning for neomillennial learning styles. Educause Quarterly, 28(2), 7-12.

Laureate Education Inc., (n.d.) Planning and Designing Online Courses [video]. Author: Dr. George Piskurich and Jacqueline Chauser.  Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype=Course%26id=_2818555_1%26url=

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Distance Education Redefined

My Prior Definition of Distance Learning

I’ve been a distance-learning student for over a year now and yet prior to this week’s resources I would probably define distance learning as simply an opportunity to learn via the internet from anywhere and at any time.  I would not have made the distinction between self-study and distance learning and would have considered tutorials such as those found on Lynda.com to be a source of distance education.  Further, I would probably project this prior definition to only higher education or self-study tools as this is all I have been familiar with before now, and would not have recognized the distinction between formal/academic learning as opposed to non-academic learning. 

As a high-school student my only experience with distance education was a DVD correspondence course that may have well been considered self-study since feedback from instructors was so untimely that it was virtually useless.  Later, in my teaching career I took some correspondence courses for professional development, which used a combination of textbook, DVD, and web-based videos to learn, and online testing tools for evaluation of understanding.  These were more effective than my high-school experience and were according to Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2012), “institution-based, formal education where the learning group is separated” (p. 32).  However this experience still lacked the fourth component of distance education according to Simonson et. al: “interactive telecommunications systems [that] are used to connect learners, resources, and instructors.”  This aspect of distance education has been unique to my experience at Walden.

New Perspectives

Simonson et. al. (2012) are quick to point out that “Interaction is critical, but not at the expense of the content…it is important that learners be able to interact with each other, with resources of instruction, and with their teacher.  However, interaction should not be the primary characteristic of instruction…” (p. 34).  Additionally, interaction is allowed to be synchronous or asynchronous, but must be two-way even though by definition the learning takes place with physical separation between learners and the teacher.  Going one step further, Simonson et. al. (2012) refers to Edwards’ (1995) distinction between distance learning and “open learning,” which “shifts from mass production and mass consumption to a focus on local and individual needs and requirements.”  In other words, open-learning, according to Edwards, tasks instructors in much the same way as traditional teachers to use curriculum as part of a larger strategy to meet the individual needs of a specific set of learners rather than the dissemination of generic curriculum indiscriminately to a larger number of diverse learners.  I also feel that although Simonson’s definition describes interactions via interactive telecommunications as including any mode of communication at a distance, the internet is making postal and telephone communications obsolete in distance education (ie. Email replacing mail, and Skype replacing phone conferencing service).

A new definition

After this week then, my definition of distance education would be: The formal academic education of individuals within an accredited organization, separated from each other and their teacher, but learning from anywhere and anytime by interacting and sharing knowledge with each other via web-based technologies.

Distance Learning of the Future

I think that several parts of the current definition will change as distance learning gains new traction in different facets of the educational sector, and as technology continues to bring those closer who are far away from one another.   First I believe that the “formal institution” will be challenged and distance learning will gain credibility through informal institutions of various kinds, and including self-study resources.  It is possible that in the future, simple one-minute games that people play for pleasure will be developed to train employees in processes and procedures, or to reinforce academic concepts.  “Accidental learning” –if I can coin a term—will be everywhere.  Intentionally created, but so accessible and fun that traditional forms of evaluation and accountability will be less necessary.  Instant feedback and data monitoring will be embedded in such a quick and easy-to access way that the average person will be able to track their learning in a wide range of subjects without the many formal needs of an institution.  As a result of this massive shift in what we perceive as learning, I believe that the “formal institutions” will find it harder and harder to keep themselves exclusively in the definition of distance learning. Whether or not this informal education will be effective or not remains to be seen, but the formats of learning, evaluation, and record-keeping will become less and less formal and more and more instant.

Related to this, just as formal online-universities have given the traditional university system a run for its money as of late, I think that as higher education costs go up we will see more private corporations and industries developing their own specialized post-secondary learning opportunities that allow post-secondary students to bypass the entire higher-ed system alltogether.  Much like the military pays for training and education for their highschool recruits through the GI bill, I foresee distance learning being used by companies who will act as their own “formal learning institutions” who would rather train their own employees right out of the chute—offering them instant jobs and no college debt.  Cisco systems has been offering this for years—essentially training high-school students in network and internet skills with the promise of instant employment after completion.  My prediction is that other organizations will follow this model in order to compete globally by providing more relevant training to future employees.  Distance learning will be a huge part of this endeavor much as the military uses it now.

A third trend to watch for is an increasing relevance for distance education in public perception.  As instructional designers continue to identify and develop a  “systematic examination of our pedagogical underpinnings” (Lynch, Corry, & Koffenberger, 1999, p. 20), distance learning will grow into its own skin and no longer need to carry a “craft approach” which essentially takes traditional-classroom methods and imposes them into a web-based format (Moller, Foshay & Huett, 2008).  In contrast, distance education will be recognized on its own merits of quality learning. 

Finally, as a result of increasingly advanced technologies for collaboration, data recording, adaptive learning (ie. Knewton), and interactive simulations, instructors both in and outside the brick-and-mortar classroom will be transformed into facilitators, coaches, and guides rather than gatekeepers to knowledge.  At first this will be intimidating and threatening until these instructors discover the joy of helping learners discover how to be high-level critical thinkers and problem solvers without being bogged down with so many duties of grading, recording, and curriculum development.  Time will be spent on the things that matter such as: providing feedback, questioning, empowering learners, individual student differentiation and creative development of authentic learning experiences.  There will still be place for the classroom teacher, professor or trainer, but the difference is, they will be doing what their title implies, not rushing through a lecture to get to their research, or managing endless details of everything from behavior to photocopies.  These leaders in education will once again capture the minds of learners and their own joy as educators. 

College student at Arizona State University using the Knewton platform

References:

Corry, M., Koffenberger, W., & Lynch, W.(1999). Web-based distance education: Faculty recruitment and training. In Proceedings of 1999 (pp. 671-676). Chesapeake, VA:AACE.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008a). 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.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at      a Distance. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Welcome

This blog has been setup with the intended purpose of discussing instructional design topics and specifically those topics related to distance learning.  I look forward to sharing insights and reflecting on others!  Check back soon.