Distance Education Best Practices

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First of all, I want to congratulate and thank everyone who has been doing online education at EBI for the past three semesters. Moore and Kearsley propose a working definition of distance education as, “teaching and planned learning in which teaching normally occurs in a different place from learning, requiring communication through technologies as well as special institutional organization (2012).” Two years ago, online learning didn’t happen at EBI. Today, we each interact regularly with students asynchronously via Populi, which technically counts as distance education according to Moore and Kearsley’s definition. Crazy!

Still, we have a long way to go in order to catch up with current educational trends. Allen and Seaman (2013) Point out that as of 2012, 62.4% of higher education institutions provided complete online programs to students. They claim that only 13.5% of higher education institutions offered no purely online classes at all... that was five years ago. You may have heard we’re moving in the direction of offering purely online classes ourselves.

Considering that, let’s examine some online learning best practices in this blog post. Moore and Kearsley (2012) propose that distance education is best delivered and designed in the broader framework of a supporting system. In their words, “adopting a systems approach [to distance ed] is the secret of successful practice.”  They identify the main subsystems of a distance education system as: technology, learning, teaching, program/course design, management, policy, and organization. 

They go on to say, “Content, or subject matter, does not make a course. In a course, the content is organized into a carefully designed structure that is intended to make it as easy as possible for the student to learn... Therefore, preparing a distance education course requires not only the content expert but also instructional designers who can organize the content according to what is known about the theory and practice of knowledge management and the theory of learning.” The point here is that online education (just like all education) is best envisioned as a collaborative effort between multiple experts: design experts, technologists, chief education officers (think dean of ed), and content experts to name a few examples.

Everyone agrees that the key to an online class is communication. This communication should not just exist in the form of content delivery (one way communication). Moore and Kearsley say, “it is the communication that goes on between the individual learner and an instructor that transforms common information into personally relevant knowledge (2012)”. They go on to explain that the form this personal communication takes and the extent of the communication will vary based on the subject matter being taught, the educational philosophy of the designers, and even the maturity level of the students. But they make a point to emphasize the imperative nature of this type of communication. Similarly, most instructional designers emphasize the importance of peer interactions via discussion boards, wikis, or blogs, etc.

Finally, a key component of all education including distance education is quality control. In distance education, the key components of quality control are the products that students complete at regular intervals throughout the course. These are generally thought of as “assignments”, though quality control can be insured another ways as well. These assignments should be based on the knowledge content of the course and deserve careful review, evaluation, correction, and comment from the instructor himself. Anecdotally, speaking from my own experience, I have found that online assignments tend to be more challenging and time consuming than assignments in face-to-face courses. There is a very real sense in which online learning requires discipline, time, and commitment.

What has your experience been so far in delivering assignments and some content knowledge online to students at EBI using Populi? What components of the systems approach outlined above do you include in your regular teaching even for face-to-face courses? Which course has been the best online course that you’ve ever taken? What made it so good? What are the essential characteristics and qualities of a good online teacher? Are they the same as those for a good face-to-face teacher?

Feedback is always welcome.

Sources:

Moore, M. G., & Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance education: a systems view of online learning. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

I. Elaine Allen, & Jeff Seaman. (2013). Changing course: ten years of tracking online education in the United States. Pearson Education.