Distance Learning: My Experience as a Student and Instructor

If asked to explain Distance Education a week ago, I would have described my first experience with online classes at the undergraduate level.  As a single parent working full time, I didn’t have a lot of options when I decided to go back to school but I knew I needed to do it for myself and my family.  Like many other distance education students, I had to balance work and family and wanted to limit additional time away from home (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright & Zvacek 2012).  When I first started, broadband internet was not widely available in my area and dial-up consumed our only phone line in the house so family resources were a bit of a struggle for a while.  As technology and access improved though, it all leveled out. 

I am not much of a writer so I selected College Composition as my first class, in hopes that I would become a better writer and be able to use the new skills in future classes.  The instructor used a lot of different font colors, sizes and styles in the announcements.  Being new to the online environment I was nervous anyway and missed an important element in the first assignment.  That little misstep really through me off course for the whole term but it was just the first in a long series of problem understanding this particular instructor.  I thought I might just give it up at the end.  Luckily I stuck with it and found that most of the other instructors I encountered possessed the basic skills required to teach distance education (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008).

I had never thought of distance education for elementary, junior high or high school but recently I found out that my nephew Hunter started attending one.  Last year, in seventh grade his grades suddenly dropped from A’s to D’s and my brother was naturally concerned.  He found out that class sizes had grown to 35 -45 students.  The school had severe overcrowding problems which is one of several reasons a school district chooses to offer a site-based distance education alternative (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008).  Now he attends each of his classes once a week and does the rest from home online. My brother’s schedule allows him to be home with Hunter but this option may not work for a typical family where parents work out of the home.  His grades have improved to B’s and C’s at this point.  I think that his father is also playing a larger role in his education now either because of the decline last year or simply because distance education facilitates parental involvement better than a brick and mortar school.  It seems to be working very well for my nephew and I expect we will see more distance education to combat teacher shortages and overcrowding in schools.  This could leave more underage children in the home without supervision which may be acceptable for upper level classed by certainly not elementary level. 

My nephew’s experience got me thinking about my own children and if they would have been more successful if they had the choice to attend school online.  My oldest graduated in 2011 and spent her first college year living away from home on the campus of a large university.  She passed most of her classes but really did not like it she switched to a smaller college and became a part time student.  She drove an hour to school twice a week, lived locally but still didn’t enjoy the experience.  For her third attempt, she chose an online school (the same one I graduated from) and is doing great.  If her high school had incorporated more online learning, she may have found this avenue much sooner.  My son attended a different high school but also did not participate in any online learning activities.  With so many colleges and universities offering this mode of learning delivery, it seems that we should expose children early in their educational journey to the alternatives. 

Using the traditional definition of education that is “institutionally based” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright & Zvacek 2012, p. 33), I wasn’t sure I would be able to use much from this course in my profession.  The definition is expanding to the corporate setting and will make learning more accessible to staff.  Many corporate educators lack the expertise and comfort level with technology so successful distance education may require changes.  We already take advantage of our Learning Management System to deliver e-learning to staff but we have not explored delivering anything synchronously using technology or even involving instructors or trainers past the point of designing the content.  We don’t yet use much in the way of evaluation of our e-learning and that may really enhance the quality of our courses (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008).  In order to take full advantage of this mode of delivery, we will need to prepare our educators and trainers to work in the online environment. 

Distance Learning has been around since the 1800’s in various forms (Laureate Education, n. d.).  Technology has certainly had an impact on the methods and modes of delivery with newer technologies replacing the old in most cases.  Though many developing countries may still use radio broadcasts, a deeper shared learning experience can be achieved through the internet (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright & Zvacek 2012).  This is where the future of distance learning lives.  We need to explore distance education not just for those that have little or no access to education otherwise, but also because this may be a mode of delivery that works even better than the live instructor-led model we are so accustomed to. 

References

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

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), 63–6 7.

Multimedia Program: "Distance Learning Timeline Continuum", Laureate Education, Inc., n. d.