Definitions
To get
started I would like you to think about what you understand distance education
to be.
When a term with specific meaning is used carelessly by people who don't know
its real meaning, it ceases to be a means of communication and becomes a source
of confusion. There is widespread confusion among educators about distance
education, but one of the outcomes of this course is that in future you
will not be among the confused or contribute to the confusion. Besides the
improper use of terms, there are several different uses of the terminology
related to distance education that reflect legitimate different perspectives.
These are differences among educated users of the language. I want you to
be among the educated. You need the conceptual understanding that allows you,
when someone says or writes
"distance education," to recognize if they know what they are talking about,
and if you think they do, which of these legitimate perspectives they are
taking.
Your Tasks:
Note: All hyperlinks will open in a new browser window.
- Find a piece of paper and write down your own definition of distance education. Keep this nearby.
- Read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 1-3.
- Go online to the American Journal of Distance Education Web site (http://www.ajde.com/Contents/vol5_3.htm#editorial) and read the editorial in Volume 5, Number 3: "Distance Education Theory."
- Read the articles in Supplementary Readings by Garrison and Keegan.
- Jot down or highlight what appear to be the key characteristics that define distance education.
- Compare these with what you wrote.
- If necessary, or if you want to, re-write your definition.
Comment: I imagine that in your first effort at the definition you said something about "technology" and perhaps you said something about "separation" of teachers and learners. If you said "separation" I congratulate you, because you already moved past the most common idea about distance education; i.e. that it is education with technology (I almost wrote "bells and whistles"!) Technology, of course, is essential in distance education, but technology is to distance education as a room (note I do not even say "classroom" since that indicates a certain social organization) is to other forms of education. After you read the text, I think you will agree that it is the separation of learner and teacher that is the key characteristic of distance education. Not all education in which technology is used is distance education; but all education where teacher and learner are separated is distance education. Note that the textbook goes on to point out the related characteristics that make distance education distinctive. These are the "special techniques of course design and instruction" and "special organizational and administrative arrangements" made necessary by the separation of teacher and learner. Learning about these will take a lot of our time in this course.
A good way of testing whether a particular course is a distance education course is to ask where the principal teaching decisions are made. Who is deciding what is to be learned? When and how is it to be learned? When has learning been satisfactorily completed? If they are normally made in one place and communicated to the student by a technology, programs are defined as distance education.
Search
the Web and find some other definitions of distance education. Are the definitions
you find the same as ours? One place to start is the Distance Education Clearinghouse ( http://www.uwex.edu/disted/definition.html) and, if you wish, you can look for other
leads in some of the materials provided in the Resources section.
Notes about icons used similarly throughout the course:
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