Second Thoughts About Distance Education

Commentary

For the last decade, due to the development of information and communications technologies, distance education systems have been enhanced with many powerful features, such two-way audio and video conferencing, Internet, electronic mail, and multimedia presentation. Given the advantages of these innovations, an increasing number of higher education institutions embrace the new delivery alternative, offering education courses over a distance to reach a greater student population.

While distance education is widely welcomed by many education institutions, many researchers are investigating whether distance education can provide distance students with the same level of academic experience as courses taught in traditional modes. After reviewing much of the research from the 1980s and 1990s, Moore and Thompson (1990, 1997) concluded that distance education was considered effective “when effectiveness [was] measured by the achievement of learning, by the attitudes of students and teachers, and by return on investment (1997, p.59). The results seemed encouraging. However, with a close examination, there were some covert aspects with respect to distance learning and teaching left unexamined or, maybe, ignored. In a large portion of distance education research, researchers simply examined those overt outcomes of a distance course in the end of a semester, such as student test scores, grades, attrition, and satisfaction. Immeasurable and subtle variables, such as the social dimension, group dynamics, interpersonal relations, and covert feelings of students and teacher, were often left neglected.

Of course, those subtle and covert variables involved in the distance education environment can be overlooked if we view education as merely the transmission of knowledge and information. However, education is more than just scores or grades recorded on students' transcripts. Academic achievement is only one purpose that education serves. According to the holistic view of education, besides academia, education should also include the development of social norms, social connections, interpersonal relationships, and partnerships among participating individuals in a learning environment. In other words, learning is multi-dimensional, involving cognitive, affective, psychomotor, interpersonal, and social domains.

In offering students holistic education, effective social interactions are crucial and sufficient communications is the premise. In the traditional face-to-face classroom, the visual, verbal, and non-verbal communications are inherently integrated in the teaching and learning process. By looking at the students' facial expressions, a classroom teacher can readily detect their perceptions of course materials and classroom activities. The physical present and face-to-face communication not only facilitate the rapport between teacher and students, but also increase students' feeling of belonging to the learning group. Meanwhile, social norms and consensus are easy to establish while teacher and students are in the traditional classroom physically.

In distance education settings, the telecommunication technologies only allow limited transmission of audio and visual signals. Some cues are filtered out through the mediated communication. A student with a raised hand might not be recognized by the distance instructor, not to mention a puzzled look on a confused student’s face. This unintended ignorance can turn a motivated student to a reticent one. At the same time, a distance teacher might sacrifice some of his or her valuable teaching strategies to meet constraints of communication technologies. This, to some extent, reduces the education quality in distance education mode.

Other shortcomings of distance education obstructing communications are the rigorousness of technology use and its numerous difficulties. Optimally, instructional technologies should function accordingly and seamlessly so that the users do not feel the existence of it. This vision, for most of the time, is only an ideal. Very often teacher and students are asked to adjust their behaviors in order to accommodate the rigorous requirements of technologies, such as holding a microphone still while speaking, or looking at the camera while speaking to a remote site. These against-nature requirements can be very annoying and aggravating for instructor and students alike. Furthermore, distance teachers and students often find the instruction process is frequently disrupted by technical trivia, such as background noses and echo generated from the remote sites. The time spent removing technical disruption is time taken away from the precious, valuable, and limited class time. Thus, technical difficulties not only distract teacher and students' attention, but also reduce the effectiveness of instruction.

Although the remote-site students perform equally to their on-campus counterparts, they often report that they do not feel that they belong to a learning community, which is considered essential part of traditional campus life by many students. According to research on effectiveness of student learning, social dimension is critical to instructional effectiveness either in traditional classroom-based instruction or distance education mode. Individual success or failure in a course often depends upon the extent to which students feel a sense of community (Lave & Wenger, 1990). However, in the distance education environment, due to the separation and technical constraints, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to establish a learning community over a distance.

Although distance education systems offer an education alternative for students who cannot physically attend the campus for various reasons, there are limitations. Any education institution wanting to initiate distance education programs should be aware of the limitations and constraints of distance education and not sacrifice the education quality for their distance students.

Reference

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1990). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral practice. New York: Cambridge U. Press.

Moore, M. G., & Thompson, M. M. (1990). The effects of distance learning: A summary of literature. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 330 321.

Moore, M. G., & Thompson M. M. (1997). The effects of distance learning (Rev. ed. ACSDE Research Monograph No. 15). University Park, PA: American Center for the Study of Distance Education, Pennsylvania State University.