EDITORIAL

PRESENTATION AND PARTICIPATION

Like other forms of education, all distance education consists of two-sided relationships; on one side are learners, and on the other teachers. It was no less an authority than John Dewey who compared the teaching-learning relationship with merchandizing. "No one", he wrote, "can sell unless someone buys. We should ridicule a merchant who said that he had sold a great many goods although no one had bought any. There is the same exact equation between teaching and learning that there is between selling and buying.....The only way to increase the learning of pupils is to augment the quantity and quality of real
teaching".(Dewey,1933).

But what is real teaching, and how is it possible to augment its quantity and quality ? What indeed is real selling? In modern retailing it would hardly be ridiculous for professionals in the advertising industry to claim they had spent a great deal of time in selling a new product that was not yet even on the market. Is a person who prepares a catalogue for home shoppers not "selling", even though there is no buyer in sight ? Is the person who takes a customer's complaint by telephone also helping to sell the next purchase ? Ought not the department store's wholesale buyers be counted also among its sellers? It is apparent that the individual who exchanges goods for cash is only the last in a chain of persons involved in selling. The act of selling is not one one person's word, but that of many specialists for the majority of whom there is a time lapse between their contribution and the ultimate consumation of "buying".

Clearly the comparison between merchandising and teaching that Dewey noted remains instructive today. Distance education is to teaching in the one room school house as is J.C.Penney to the 1930's mom-and-pop general store. In education as in merchandising, we can expect improvements in quantity and quality of teaching from the judicious introduction of division of labor and new communications technology, together with a redefinition of the work of the specialist at the point of interface between the learner and the teaching organization, the person who is usually referred to as "teacher".

Of course specialization and technology do not in themselves guarantee improvements in quality,-- and the comparison with merchandising will provide support for that assertion too.

In education, failures in technology are usually the result of decision makers being unaware of the multi-dimensional nature of teaching, and consequently neglecting one or more of its constituent activities. Among conventional educators this results in an excessive responsibility being placed on the classroom teacher but in distance education the neglect is a different one. It is --suprisingly when one considers the merchandizing analogy-- a sometimes cavalier neglect of what occurs before, during, and after the delivery of teaching materials to the learner. An over simple view of view of teaching interprets it as merely the presentation of information. Whether the primary communication medium is print, audio or video tape recordings, broadcasts or teleconferences, there is often an imbalance between the time and effort devoted to experts' presentations of information and the arrangements made for learning.

In a fairly typical two hour video-teleconference, a presenter was interviewed for thirty minutes by a moderator, and this was followed by a fifteen minute pre-taped interview with another expert. After a return to the first two experts for a further twenty-five minutes, and a case study, also pre-taped, the experts talked yet again for twenty minutes. Learners had fifteen minutes in which they put questions to the presenters. An evaluation report gives details about the opening music, animated graphics, upholstered chairs and the plants on the sets. The main criticisms concern the speakers' clothing, and the conclusion was that the conference was "highly professional".

Of course it is very desirable, when a presentation must be made that it is made in the most excellent and professional manner. However, presentations are not in themselves teaching. They are only part of the transaction between learner and teacher that we call education. As well as presentations of information, at least as much attention should be devoted to the determination of each individual's need and motivation for learning; giving each individual the opportunity for testing and practicing new knowledge, and for receiving evaluation of the results of such practice. If there is any one secret to good teaching (and Dewey himself did much to raise awareness of this ) it is summed up in the word "activity". Adults particularly are more likely to learn if they play an active role in deciding what presentations will be given. Even more important, since most adult learners have considerable expertise, enhanced learning can almost be guaranteed if presentation responsibilities are devolved to, or at least shared with them. And perhaps most important of all, the flow of presentations must be broken up to give listeners time to discuss the contents,to question them away from the heat and light of the formal presentation, to apply them to their own circumstances, to engage in the intellectual activity that converts what is only information when presented into personal knowledge for each listener.

In a fairly typical audio teleconference course that I have just completed, with sixteen students in three sites, the challenge was to teach Course Design and Development. The response was to organize students into three teams and tell them THEY had to design an instructional module with my guidance. In each of eight sessions I explained different principles of designing and developing a course. Time was given for each team to identify a target population that was meaningful to that group .Each group was then guided in planning a module, making decisions about its structure, and the use of print and other media, writing a short study-guide, producing an audio tape, and considering how and in what ways they would field test it. In this way students learned through their own activity rather than from being told, some of the problems and ways of getting around problems in course design,including the benefits and problems of working as a design team .At each stage of these projects the groups would report on their progress. The participants in two groups would respond with criticisms,and suggestions derived from insights obtained from their own experience with similar problems. When the participation of everyone is encouraged the work level and the level of learning is extremely high. Distance teaching, and in particular teaching by teleconference does not have to be one-way, authoritarian, and dull,but can be open-ended, exploratory, and active, with students acting as significant resources for each others' learning.

Such learner activity and participation have long been given more attention in adult education than in schools or higher education, and have become the key characteristics of "andragogy",-- the art and science of helping adults learn .However, even though large numbers of adults are distance learners and most distance learners are adults, andragogy has been developed almost entirely in face-to-face group teaching. If the key to improving the quantity of education is distance education, the key to improving its quality is for distance education to capitalize on the discoveries about curriculum design and instruction that are named andragogy i.e. to look for more and better ways of ensuring the active participation of learners in their own instruction.

Dewey, J. 1933. Teaching is like selling. In Contemporary Thought on Teaching, ed. R.T Hyman, p.278. Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc.