Online and Distance Education

In this post I am going to speak about online and distance learning. To begin with, I would like to mention that I did a research about online and distance learning, and I learnt a lot of new things. 

    

Firstly, what is online or distance learning? Distance education or distance learning is a field of education that focuses on teaching methods and technology with the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a traditional educational setting such as a classroom.  According to Lewis (2005) online learning has become one of the most popular ways of gaining access to an education. The reality is that because of technology the world we live today is much different than 20 years ago. Our generation went from the time of the ‘Eight Track, leap to the times of the Walkman, CD player, VHS and DVD.’ etc. But today’s world is belongs to the ‘i Pod, text messaging, Wiki’s, Facebook and Blogs’ generation. These speedy changes have forced everyone, peoples or institutions to make immediate changes. Consequently, these Institutions have changed their programs, curriculums etc., in order to facilitate access to a good education.

Secondly, by reading an article by Phil Hill, I understood that he differentiates between several educational models.  Though, he says that not all these models will exist longer.

      So there are the following models:

• Ad Hoc Online Courses and Programs
•  Fully Online Programs
• School-as-a-Service
• Educational Partnerships 
• Competency-based education
• Blended/Hybrid Course and the Flipped Classroom
• MOOCs

 Many faculty members of Ad Hoc courses claim that they are getting better results and learning outcomes using online tools and the reason is the quality of online learning. According to a study by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey Research Group, fully two thirds of faculty members say that learning outcomes from online education are inferior compared with outcomes from traditional courses.

About an Educational Partnership I would like to mention that even is in not very famous, it has already shown great results. The Cisco Networking Academy program is a good example of this model. It has already scaled to serve more than 1 million students, in 165 countries, through more than 10,000 partner institutions. In this model, the educational institution offers the courses within its curriculum, allowing students to pursue industry-relevant certifications and even to use the courses as part of their degree programs.

In Blended/Hybrid Courses and the Flipped Classroom there are a lot of interactive activities and the logical extension is called the “flipped classroom”. The face-to-face class time is used for practice and actual application rather than for introducing the content being studied. The instructor then has time to help students face-to-face with specific problems. While in MOOCs, the course itself is scaled to enable an essentially unlimited number of students to take the course from the faculty members, who both design and lead the course.

Though online distance learning has advantages, it has disadvantages too. For this reason I did a research to see the challenges that students face while learning online. For this project I chose a group of learners who are doing their MA degree online in TEFL. The noteworthy thing which I found out is that, the most difficult aspect of online learning is the poor technology skill. The majority of students cannot open files, use PDFs or attach materials. Furthermore, they mentioned that they could not contact to their classmates.  The second most common answer given by the online learners was poor time management. They said that they cannot organize themselves properly, so cannot meet the deadline.

To sum up, I want to say that nowadays online learning is every popular, helpful and effective. However, while choosing to study online, the online learners should understand the time commitment required of an online course and possess or develop strong time management skills.

    

References 

žMassy, William (2002, May). Distance Education: Guidelines for Good Practice. AFT, pp. 9, 16.

žBozarth, J., Chapman, D. D., & LaMonica, L. (2004). Preparing for Distance Learning: Designing An Online Student Orientation Course. Educational Technology & Society, 7 (1), 87-106.