VOLUME 15, NUMBER 2, 2001
Editorial
Surviving as a Distance Teacher
Michael G. Moore
Articles (for abstracts,
click here)
Barriers to Distance Education: A Factor-Analytic Study
Lin Muilenburg and Zane Berge
Differences in Competencies between Doctorate Students
On-Campus and at a Distance
James R. Lindner, Kim E. Dooley, and Tim H. Murphy
Computer Self-Efficacy, Academic Self-Concept, and
Other Predictors of Satisfaction and Future Participation of Adult Distance
Learners
Christina Kyounghee Lim
Writing Web-Based Distance Education Courses for Adult
Learners
Evan S. Smith
Interview
Speaking Personally with Michael J. Sousa
Robert Wisher
Book Review
The Convergence of Distance and Conventional Education
Edited by Alan Tait and Roger Mills
James Perley
EDITORIAL
Surviving as a Distance Teacher
Michael G. Moore
According to the widely cited report by the National Center for Educational Statistics, over half of American higher-educational institutions now offer electronically delivered distance education courses (NCES 1999). Another report, that of a survey of 402 college faculty members by the National Education Association, found that faculty are generally enthusiastic about the idea of teaching distance education courses (NEA 2000).
With so many faculty moving, or thinking about moving, into online teaching, what is it they are getting into? What does it mean to be a distance teacher in the online environment?
When asked to address these questions for a recent Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) regional training workshop, I began by establishing a very simple model: Distance teaching has three sets or phases of activities, one I called Preparation, another Presentation, the third Participation.
Preparation is what happens long in advance of the learners' enrollment. The teacher prepares in anticipation, with no specific learner in mind, but indeed may have hundreds or thousands of learners in mind. The teacher prepares by setting learning objectives, structuring the content into chunks according to a budget of students' time, thinking how to stimulate and support the students' interaction with that content and with other students, and deciding how learning will be evaluated.
The raw material for the teacher's work at this phase is information. In the second phase of distance teaching, the teacher presents this information to the learners, through a technology that can be either synchronous or asynchronous-i.e., real-time or recorded. The best Presentations are often those that are recorded, because there is time to edit out the extraneous material and to revise the structure of what is to be presented. If recorded, the Presentation, like the Preparation, takes place prior to the appearance of the students, and is aimed at a mass, or at least a group, audience.
It is at the time of Participation that the information thus prepared and presented is wrestled with by each individual learner and processed into personal knowledge; what is "presented" isn't knowledge, because only each individual can make knowledge, each in his or her own way, as each integrates new information into his/her individual knowledge structures, building on previous experiences and perceptions.
What Does it Mean, Then, to be
a Distance Teacher?
It depends on the organization you work in, but quite commonly in US institutions
we expect the faculty to be able to prepare, present, and facilitate Participation.
Faculty are also expected to monitor progress, evaluate performance, counsel
those with problems, and perhaps undertake other duties, with, as a consequence,
considerable stress on themselves, on students, and
on administrators.
Assuming you are either to be a teacher under these circumstances, or administering such teaching, here are some tips for survival:
- In preparing your content, be sure to organize it to take into account the time that a student can reasonably spend on it. In a three-credit course, this would usually be no more than about ten hours a week for fifteen weeks. Whatever your assumption about the students' time investment, make it known to the students.
- Organize the content around learning objectives, and set assignments to test achievement of the objectives. The only reliable way of knowing if the distant learner is surviving and doing well is the quality of the written assignment. The assignment is the link between what is prepared in advance of the students' Participation and the progress towards successful knowledge construction by each individual student. Although much is written and said about learning objectives, most courses have poorly thought-out and poorly stated objectives. If the objectives are not good, the assignment questions cannot be good, and the monitoring-and the support of the student-cannot be good. There is a direct relationship between the quality of the objectives and the quality of the course itself.
- In presenting the content, consider that not all information has to be transmitted by the Internet, and consider the benefits of the audio-video package. From a Presentation point of view, the Internet allows only very limited use of audio and video, whereas a richer content can usually be presented on CD-ROM, by audiotape or videotape, or in readings. Such materials should, if possible, be of high production values. In a small organization, they probably cannot be made in-house but may be purchased, and used subject to copyright arrangements.
- This leaves the Internet for Presentation mainly in text, and as the principal technology for the Participation phase of teaching.
- Whether you present some-or, like most of us, all-of your content in text on the Web, pay attention to such details as layout, font, and color schemes. Avoid making the "teaching in text" look like a textbook on the one hand or an advertising site on the other.
- Develop expertise in writing-not just writing, but "tutorial" writing: personal, anecdotal, encouraging, informative … authoritative but not authoritarian.
- Attend to student motivation and the affective dimension of being a student. In the Participation phase, try to establish sympathetic interpersonal relations with each individual learner and establish friendly relationships among the learners. I do this by, for example, having each learner set up a personal home page, but primarily by designing the course so that everyone is encouraged to relate to some or all of the others in the course.
- Get the students actively involved in their learning. Having students participate actively as soon as possible is important because it not only helps break the ice, but also sets the tone of future work. Students are likely to have acquired a view of the same communications media that they must use as learners that leads them to expect to adopt passive roles rather than to be active. Some specific techniques that may be used include asking questions (either directed or rhetorical); presenting problems or issues for individual or group analysis; encouraging students to answer assignments with personal experiences; and arranging group discussions or group self-evaluations.
- There is little point using an interactive medium if you don't propose to structure and encourage interaction. Interactive teaching is really a "mental set" that requires teachers to think about inducing knowledge rather than instilling it, to ask questions rather than give answers, to focus on students' creating knowledge rather than stopping at the teacher's Presentation of information. (One important side effect of increasing the degree of Participation and interlearner interaction is that it affords more opportunity for social interaction among students and teachers-and students enjoy and appreciate this. In other words, increasing the level of Participation in a class supports motivation as well as learning.)
- In particular, I require each individual to produce and post a weekly assignment, which is the source of my monitoring their progress and intervening when needed. I also require every student to comment on, question, or add to each of those assignment postings. Typically, my class of thirty people may make as many as 400 postings each week.
- Don't intervene too much. Establish the culture of independent learning and peer Participation. I do not respond to the majority of postings, but respond to what I consider to be key ideas that emerge in the interlearner interactions. I intervene with a private e-mail to any individual who I think needs special help. (Essentially, this is a system that I monitor, but if the Preparation and Presentation is good, the course will enable the students to participate actively, and the instructor may play a relatively nonintrusive role.)
- Students are at different levels of self-directedness, and some will need and demand more personal attention than others and feel resentment if they do not get it. Most are more able to cope than many teachers recognize. The ability of a learner to develop a personal learning plan, in some ways different from others, or the ability to find resources for study in one's own work or community environment, or the ability to decide for oneself when progress was satisfactory should not be treated as extraneous and regrettable noise in a smooth-running, instructor-controlled system, but rather should be seen as powerful energy to be engaged by the teacher or teaching institution.
- This is not easy: Try to get your organization to provide specialist support in the Preparation and Presentation phases and, if you have many students who seem to need intensive personal support, try to get teaching assistants in the Participation phase. At the Participation phase, an institution will have a better program by supporting a master teacher with a number of teaching assistants and thereby increase the quality of support as well as supporting a larger number of students. To have a master teacher support Participation in a ratio of one such master teacher to twenty-or even thirty-students is not efficient. For such a teacher to monitor Participation of 200 students, supported by ten teaching assistants, is. It is possible to have good quality, large numbers and, thus, cost-effectiveness; it requires creative administration of resources to obtain this.
References
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). 1999. [online]. Distance
education at postsecondary education institutions: 1997-98, NCES2000-013,
report prepared by L. Lewis, K. Snow, E. Farris, and D. Levin. B. Green,
project officer, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Available
at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000013.pdf
National Education Association (NEA). 2000. [online.] Confronting
the future of distance learning-Placing quality in reach. June 14.
Available at http://www.nea.org/nr/nr000614.html
Barriers to Distance
Education: A Factor-Analytic Study
Lin Muilenburg and Zane L. Berge
This article reports on a large-scale (n = 2,504), exploratory
factor analysis that determined the underlying constructs that comprise
barriers to distance education. The ten factors found were (1) administrative
structure, (2) organizational change, (3) technical expertise, (4) social
interaction and quality, (5) faculty compensation and time, (6) threat
of technology, (7) legal issues, (8) evaluation/effectiveness, (9) access,
and (10) student-support services.
Differences in Competencies between Doctoral Students
On-Campus and at a Distance
James R. Lindner, Kim E. Dooley, and Tim H. Murphy
This article describes differences between on-campus and
distance learners by knowledge, skills, and abilities. On-campus doctoral
students at Texas A&M University were compared with doctoral students
enrolled in a distance education program offered jointly with Texas Tech
University. Student perceptions of their competency levels were gathered
using a mixed mailed/Internet questionnaire. On-campus and distance education
students had different levels of competence. Competency models can serve
faculty and administrators as an assessment tool for strategic decision
making and development of courses and curricula. This study provides a
model for benchmarking competencies and provides baseline data for making
such changes.
Computer Self-Efficacy, Academic Self-Concept, and Other Predictors of
Satisfaction and Future Participation of Adult Distance Learners
Christina Kyounghee Lim
The purpose of this study was to develop a predictive model
of satisfaction of adult learners in a Web-based distance education course
and their intent to participate in future Web-based distance education
courses. The factors examined were computer self-efficacy, academic self-concept,
age, gender, academic status, years of computer use, frequency of computer
use, computer training, Internet experience in a class, and participation
in a workshop for a Web-based course. Computer self-efficacy was the only
predictor variable that was statistically significant. There was a positive
relationship between learners' satisfaction with their Web-based distance
education courses and their intent to participate in future Web-based
courses.
Writing Web-Based Distance Education Courses for Adult Learners
Evan S. Smith
This study examines faculty writing style in Web-based courses aimed at adult learners, a key audience for university-level courses. Taking into account independent-study courses and others, the investigator conducted faculty interviews, looking at written and oral strategies implicit in teaching; print vs. Web formats; and adherence to educational philosophies. Faculty who were interviewed revealed minimal experience in both print and Web realms, minimal style differences beyond teaching netiquette or using occupational jargon, and adherence to active learning or social constructivism.
