Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

Communication in distance education has evolved in the area of personal contact. In the area of face to face (FTF) contact there is traditionally a classroom that consists of an instructor and peers. In distance education an online community is established and for many years this was the extent of the group. Now the online classroom can be further enhanced through online chat rooms and web conferencing (such as Skype). Although this does not replace FTF contact it does lessen the feeling of being isolated from the classroom community. Colleagues can meet and discuss group projects and lectures and get that personal connection that many feel is left out of the distance education program.

In a blog by Steve Foerster, he mentions the use of “robots” for instructors. Carnegie University offers an intelligent tutoring system that works with the student. It provides help when prompted and remediation when needed. This type of communication is beneficial for those students t hat like an independent learning environment and can be self-motivated to achieve the necessary mastery of given topics. To read more about this topic please visit his blog at http://community.elearners.com/blogs/atsu/archive/2009/12/30/is-your-instructor-obsolete.aspx .

In another blog by Elizabeth O’Neill, http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/learning-online-info , she offers a few opinions on distance learning. One that was particular to my area, communication, actually mentions that online students can develop stronger connections because of the scheduled communication. Students are required to post comments and participate in such environments that they may not in the traditional classroom. Through this “forced” interaction the idea of lacking communication in the distance learning environment is diminished.

6 comments:

  1. I would have to agree with Elizabeth O'Neill in the fact that scheduled communication makes for stronger communication in the online environment. It also forces those students who usually do not speak up in class or are afraid to, a voice. I enjoy being able to type what I am thinking but also having the ability to edit before I post. We don't get to edit our discussion in the F2F environment.

    Thanks,

    Charlotte

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  2. I have actually been accused online of being too "active" and in the past have been asked by instructors to slow down when I was in my bachelor program at University of Phoenix. Apparently, some post-secondary students felt they could not get a word in because I appeared to have 'owned' the discussion and made people feel uncomfortable.

    I think that even if someone feels braver behind the computer screen, there will still be others who, no matter what, will feel inferior and fail to participate for whatever reason.

    If you were an instructor, and you had a very active student that was participating fully, would you ask the student to ease up or would you support the activity and engage the student more?

    --Tiffany

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  3. I think I might try to redirect the student to help others that are not fully participating or provide them with the ability to be a leader in the online community. I wouldn't want to stiffle the excitement of the student.

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  4. I just saw this post, but I remember when I had students in class that were eager to participate. I taught a young lady with Ausbergers syndrome, that new a lot of science. However, she would answer questions before other students had a adequate think time to come up with their own answers. This exchange has to be dealt with so that other students can participate. I don't think you have to stifle the active participant, I had the yound lady in my class keep track on her paper of how many questions she knew that the class did not. She kept score and tried to beat the class in her head. She would tell me the score at the end of the day. "Coach, I got five of your questions right before the class did." This helped cause she had to let them finish to see if anyone got it right.
    Its not how I would handle it in an online College class but it worked great in my high school room.

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  5. How could you translate that to the online classroom?

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  6. It's always nice to read about other people's experiences in their studies. Thanks for sharing this post.

    computer science degree online

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