Blog Assignment for Week 1

Your personal definition and observations of distance learning before starting this course. Consider what you learned about distance learning this week and how this learning has influenced your personal definition.

Let's see my personal definition of distance learning is students learning information and concepts in an online forum with the Instructor taking on a facilitator role.

Your revised definition, which combines your previous thoughts about distance learning with new information you learned this week.

I think that I am amazed that our book labels/categorizes distance learning into four components: "Institutinally based, seperation of teacher and student, interactive telecommunications, and sharing of data, voice and video (learning experience). (Simonson, 2009, p. 32)

I was rather surprised at the seperation aspect between the teacher and the student. In all of my years in taking online classes, I have never felt seperated from my Instructors. I knew that I could always contact my Instructors through e-mail, phone calls, and/or in class. It never crossed my mind that my Instructor might reside in a different state/city than me. I feel that most of my Instructors have done a good job in making their students feel that they are always accessible, therefore, eliminating the feeling of seperation. Our book stated the following, "...seperation is thought of in geographic terms - teachers are in one location and students are in another." (Simonson, 2009, p. 32)

A summary of your vision for the future of distance learning as it continues on a path of evolution and change.

For instance, our sister campus is toying with Skyping for a real time class. There is a student who resides in Washington State, and there are no special education classes available where she lives. Our sister campus (California) had this particular class that she needed, so the Instructor is skyping the class for her in real time.

Personally, I feel that we will see many more sit-down classes evolve to some type of online forum. The univeristy that I work for, we instituted blended (hybrid) learning. The student attends class from 6:00PM to 9:00PM, and the bulk of their written work is completed online.

For instance, if done correctly, the online class can take a complex concept, and turn it into a multimedia presentation where a student will grasp easily.


References:

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 1: Training and development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70–75.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66–70.

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5), 63–67.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.


My Mindmap: