VOLUME 9, NUMBER 3, 1995
Editorial
The Death of Distance
Michael G. Moore
Articles (for abstracts,
click here)
An Institutional Support Framework for Increasing Faculty Participation
in Postsecondary Distance Education
Don Olcott, Jr. and Stephen J. Wright
The Multidimensional Audioconferencing Classification
System (MACS)
Peter S. Cookson and Yu-bi Chang
A Review of Distance Learning Studies in the U.S.
Military
Michael Barry and Gregory B. Runyan
Distance Education for Aboriginal Communities in Canada:
Past Experience and Future Potential
Steve Gruber and Gary Coldevin
Grass Roots
Student Support via Audio Teleconferencing: Psycho-educational Workshops
for Post-Bachelor Nursing Students
Vivian Lalande
Interview
Speaking Personally with Raj Dhanarajan
Alan Tait
Book Review
Instructional Effectiveness of Video Media
by C. D. Wetzel, P. H. Radtke, and H. W. Stern
Paul M. Biner
Media Review
New Model, New Resources for Distance Education: A Review of Inside the
Global Economy
Peter J. Dirr
Wedemeyer Awards
EDITORIAL
The Death of Distance
Michael G. Moore
"The Death of Distance" is the title given to a special supplement on telecommunications in the most recent issue of the international journal, The Economist. "What will happen," asks The Economist "when the cost of communications comes down to next to nothing, as seems likely some time in the first decade of the next century? The death of distance will mean that any activity that relies on a screen or a telephone can be carried out anywhere in the world."
While The Economist says very little about the application of technology in education, it is obvious to readers of The American Journal of Distance Education that both teaching and learning, being activities that can be conducted by screen or telephone, are among those areas that will be influenced in varying ways by "the death of distance." In the years immediately ahead we will find it increasingly necessary to modify the classical pedagogical practices that our schools are organized for, as well as the educational institutions that support those practices.
As governments and corporations around the world race to install fiber-optic and related ISDN technologies in schools, universities, workplaces, and homes, we are fast approaching a situation in which anyone anywhere has the capability to receive and send information in multimedia form on almost any subject. As a result, an unimaginable amount of information can be instantaneously transmitted and accessed. One of the effects of this situation is a change from an era when mediated communications were controlled by governments, schools, and other agencies, and distributed to a mass audience, to an era when access is more often controlled by individual users, including learners.
What are the educators' responses
to these technologies?
There are at least four different scenarios that describe the potential
responses of teachers and educational organizations to the new opportunities
offered by changing technologies: the minimal change model, the marginal
change model, systemic change, and a virtual system.
The Minimal Change Model. The first scenario assumes no fundamental changes in the roles of teachers and in the organization of education; technology is used as an instructional aid in classes controlled by teachers on campuses. The teacher may use technology to show a series of videotapes instead of giving a personal lecture, or use audiotapes in a language class, or encourage the use of an on-line computer search for students engaged in a research project. Teachers and institutions whose pedagogy is based on the assumptions of minimal change will have to deal with one certain effect of technology: that is, teachers will not be able to compete with technology as sources of information or in communicating information. Teachers in classrooms may find that their main value will be in advising on the process of using the information resources as well as being sufficiently expert to be able to assist learners in asking the important questions to be researched using the technologies. In this case, teachers will be freed from training young people by first presenting them with information and then testing their acquisition of information; they can return to the role of specialist in the learning process which, in higher education, means the process of inquiry, of research.
Marginal Change Model. In this case, the pedagogy and most of the organization of education remains unchanged, but students in distant locations are added on to conventionally taught classes using audio-, video- or computer-conferencing technologies. This scenario currently represents the most common application of distance education in North America. Teachers using this approach must be prepared to invest much time in designing a structure for the presentation of information and for the interactive sessions needed by students to learn it. Instructors need a set of facilitative skills that include a generally inductive approach to teaching; listening intently; synthesizing information and ideas; and encouraging, stimulating and controlling discussion and interaction between sites and within sites.
One thing is certain. Teaching students at distant sites is more work, and more intensive work, than is face-to-face teaching. As a result, teachers will have to be trained, paid, and administered differently. Administrations will need to manage teachers and learners differently, and also to invent new policies and procedures to register, monitor, and evaluate learners in distant locations.
Systemic Change. In this scenario, existing higher education institutions and state higher education systems change the fundamental organization of teaching. Teaching itself is re-organized into a technologically driven system. In a systems model, educators specialize in roles such as content specialist, audio-conference specialist, print specialist, computer-conference specialist, evaluation specialist, learner-support specialist, etc. Courses are developed by teams of such specialists and taken by many students across a large geographic area. This scenario was described in Volume 7(1) of The American Journal of Distance Education ("Is Teaching Like Flying?").
A Virtual System. With the emergence of personal work stations, ISDN, and multi-media communication to any place at any time, it is possible to imagine virtual universities and schools that are place-free, with little or no formal organization. Such a virtual university, consisting of a market of individual suppliers of instruction pursued by consumer-students, paying prices determined by market forces is now technically viable. As has been said here before [AJDE Volume 7(3), "Free Trade in Higher Education"], such an organization may make instructors from anywhere available to students anywhere, and make courses prepared by any institution available to students anywhere. A student's faculty need no longer be limited to those who assemble in any one place any more than a teacher's students have to assemble in one place. No student need take instruction from exactly the same teacher as any other; students can connect with teachers from any state or country at any time and in any combination; information resources are accessible from any state or country at any time and in any combination. Advice and guidance can be universally accessible. The course development process might follow a "regional project-level model" in which a number of different institutions in a region (which may be as small as counties in a state or as large as a group of states) collaborate to develop and deliver programs and enter them into a database.
Such a network of learners and teachers returns us to the earliest concept of "university," a meeting of students with teachers, but now occurring not as a result of physical travel, but through travel on the electronic highways. The virtual university is likely to be both an opportunity and a challenge for traditional institutions and for university teachers. The opportunity lies in having a world-wide catchment area of students. The challenge lies in making the right selections of subject matter in which to specialize, in supporting the teachers who can provide world-class instruction in those subjects, and in holding both teachers and learners together with an effective administration.
Just how these transformations will occur remains to be
seen. Which, if any, of the four scenarios will prove dominant is unclear.
Perhaps we will experience the evolution of all four scenarios simultaneously,
or some other-as yet unrecognized-model may eventually appear. What seems
certain is that the nature of these transformations and the processes
by which new pedagogical procedures, new ideas about organization, and
new policies come into being as we become a globally interconnected society
will be among the most important research problems facing our field.
An Institutional Support Framework
for Increasing Faculty Participation in Postsecondary Distance Education
Don Olcott, Jr. and Stephen J. Wright
The increasing importance of distance education compels
postsecondary institutions to (1) reduce existing barriers to faculty
participation in distance education, and (2) provide support services
that will ensure student access to high-quality instructional programs.
This article presents an institutional support framework that can assist
higher education institutions in meeting these needs by appropriately
balancing the application of technologies and the development of human
resources.
The Multidimensional Audioconferencing Classification
System (Macs)
Peter S. Cookson and Yu-bi Chang
Increasing awareness and emphasis on interactional
aspects of distance education is accompanied by growing interest in describing
the actual process of audioconferencing instruction. Studies reviewed
for this article have examined some aspects of the instructional process
and outcomes of different instructional modes, but have not focused on
distance education-related interactional dimensions. This article reports
an ongoing effort to develop an instrument for tabulation, analysis, and
interpretation of audioconferencing instructional interactions. Drawing
on three theoretical and empirical streams-systematic small group interaction
analysis, systematic classroom interaction analysis, and interaction in
distance education settings, the schema presented here offers an approach
to classify and analyze the elements accounted for by the contextual structure
in audioconferencing instruction.
A Review of Distance-Learning Studies in the
U.S. Military
Michael Barry and Gregory B. Runyan
This review of literature includes recent studies of distance learning in military settings. Aspects of distance learning reviewed include (1) distance learning delivery systems, (2) effectiveness studies comparing distance learning and resident training, and (3) speculation as to the future of distance learning in military settings. Additionally, the results of interviews conducted at military sites and universities with experience in distance learning are reported.
Distance Education for Aboriginal Communities
in Canada: Past Experience and Future Potential
Steve Gruber and Gary Coldevin
Past experience with an industrial, classroom-based educational model for aboriginal students has revealed severe limitations that have resulted in secondary graduation levels far below those of the Canadian population in general. Distance education has the potential to redress many of the traditional model's inherent weaknesses, including the reduction of problems associated with cultural assimilation. Distance education also has the potential to enhance the multimedia resources of band-controlled schools, schools that have shown good promise in raising retention and attainment rates. This article reviews the current situation pertaining to education in Canadian aboriginal communities, discusses the strengths and weaknesses of two distance education programs for aboriginals, and concludes with key guidelines for future distance education endeavors.
Student Support Via Audio Teleconferencing: Psycho-Educational
Workshops for Post-Bachelor Nursing Students
Vivian Lalande
Although the provision of student services for distance learners is recognized as critical, the development of effective services for distance learners has been minimal. This paper will provide an overview of a recently initiated project designed to provide student services via audio teleconferencing to a population of Post-R.N. Bachelor of Nursing students at the University of Calgary. A series of psycho-educational workshops was developed to ease the transitions first to the distant student role and then back to the role of worker. These workshops were implemented and evaluated in terms of both process and content. Evaluation results indicated that the teleconference delivery of psycho-educational workshops is effective in providing support services to distance students.
