Distance Learning





Readers interested in Distance Learning may also want to read:


 * Staff Development via Distance Education.
 * Art Luehrman's 2002 article: "Should the computer teach the student…"—30 years later.

Introduction
Learning takes place within one's brain and the rest of one's body. The aids to learning can be internal or external. Thus, I can learn by thinking about things that I already know something about, by mentally seeking new insights and relationship. I can mentally pose and answer questions, and learn in the process of doing so.

We have a variety of senses that bring sensed data from outside our body to inside body. We process this steady stream of data, making use of some of it and ignoring most of it. This process of bringing in data and processing it can be thought of as distance learning. With that very broad definition, reading a book, watching and listening to TV, seeing birds and bees search for food, listening to a person talk, and so on are all examples of distance learning.

Of course, this broad way of viewing distance learning is quite removed from conventional definitions used in our informal and formal educational system. I like to think about the situation of sitting in a large lecture section of a college course. If I sit in the back of the room I am much further from the lecturer than if I sit in the front of the room. In either case, there may be hundreds of other students in the room. Thus, the large lecture teaching environment is a type of learning environment that is more "distant" than a one on one conversation or a small seminar.

The development of writing and printing presses, voice amplification, telegraph, telephone, voice and video recording, radio, television, and so on have greatly changed education. They have made possible anywhere, any time sources of input data that we can process and learn from.

People vary in terms of the nature of the input streams that best help them to learn various things. They also vary in the nature of feedback or interactivity that most helps them learn various things. As with the sources of information to be processed and possibly learned, feedback can be completely internal (one's mind and body provide feedback), from external sources, or a combination of the two. Part of the process of getting a good education is learning to provide effective feedback to oneself, learning to provide feedback to others, and learning to make use of feedback available from others.

Attrition in Online and Campus Degree Programs
Patterson, Belinda and McFadden, Cheryl (Summer 2009). Attrition in Online and Campus Degree Programs. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. Retrieved 6/19/09: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer122/patterson112.html.

Quoting the abstract of this article:


 * The purpose of this study was to examine how the mode of instructional delivery, campus face-to-face or online, affected dropout relative to students’ academic and demographic characteristics. A quantitative study was conducted to analyze the academic and demographic characteristics of newly admitted, matriculated degree-seeking students (N = 640) from Fall 2002 to Fall 2004 in the Master’s of Business Administration and Master’s in Communication Sciences and Disorders at a national research university in the southeastern United States. Demographic variables analyzed were age, gender, and ethnicity. Academic variables analyzed were program delivery mode, undergraduate grade point average, graduate grade point average at time of dropout or completion, admission test scores, and number of terms to degree completion or number of courses completed at time of dropout.


 * Results of the study found that online students were significantly more likely to dropout than campus based students. Age was found to have a significant unique affect on dropout in both programs with older students more likely to dropout. Academic and demographic variables were not found to be significantly associated with dropout in the online formats of either program. Variables related to dropout for the campus based groups of both programs differed. Campus MBA students who dropped out were older and had higher GMAT scores while campus CSDI students who dropped out had lower undergraduate GPA’s and GRE scores. Logistic regression analyses showed age and delivery format to have  significant unique effects beyond other predictors on dropout in the MBA program overall while age and undergraduate GPA had significant unique effects beyond other predictors on dropout for the CSDI program.

The following article contains a discussion of attrition and related topics:


 * Kleinman, Loren (2/14/2011). Online Teaching and Learning Strategies for First-Year Generation Y Students. Faculty Focus. Retrieved 2/14/2011 from http://facultyfocusemail.com/a/hBNWTpJB8X3cvB8Yiz8AAAicJsc/article.

Quoting from the article:


 * Research suggests that Generation Y first-year students have a high attrition rate as a result of their level of expectations and enthusiasm for the college experience, which often leads to disillusionment. According to Education Dynamics' November 2008 survey by California State University-Northridge, reasons online students drop out include financial challenges (41%), life events (32%), health issues (23%), lack of personal motivation (21%), and lack of faculty interaction (21%). Among online students who dropped out of their degree or certificate programs, 40% percent failed to seek any help or resources before abandoning their programs. Nearly half (47%) of students who dropped out did so before completing one online course.


 * Allen and Seaman (2007) suggested that part of the reason for online student attrition is that faculty, staff, and the strategic alignment of the college is not vested in the value and legitimacy of online learning. Allen and Seaman (2007) also suggested that colleges that have a vested interest in online education's value and legitimacy have higher faculty engagement and less student attrition. Institutions that see online education as a "long-term strategy" are successful in student degree completion. Their study "Online Nation," supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and based on responses from more than 2,500 colleges and universities, considered five questions important to the success of online education programs, including barriers to the adoption of online education and why institutions provide online learning. Allen and Seaman's study provided insight into the framework and strategic alignment of online education. However, while the study uncovered statistics on faculty and administrator engagement as relating to quality and graduation rate of students, Allen and Seaman (2007) failed to reveal how generational differences contributed to student retention or attrition.

Requiring Online Education
Higgins, Lori (1/4/09). Waivers free high school students to study online, off-campus. Freep.com. Retrieved 1/6/09: http://www.freep.com/article/20090104/NEWS05/901040439/1007.Quoting from the article:


 * Eleven Michigan school districts and one charter school can now allow students to take more courses -- and in some cases all of their classes -- online and off-campus, moves that could further cement the state's reputation as a leader in online education.


 * Michigan already broke new ground in 2006 by becoming the first state in the nation to require students take an online class or have an online educational experience in order to graduate.

Alabama has recently implemented a similar requirement for students to take at least one online course. See the July 10, 2009 eSchoolNews article Free online course helps students plan careers: Alabama becomes the second state, after Michigan, to adopt Microsoft’s CareerForward online curriculum.

Online Education in the United States, 2008

 * Allen, I. Elaine and Seaman, Jeff (2008). Staying the course: Online education in the United States, 2008. Retrieved 11/12/08: http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/staying_the_course.pdf.

Online enrollment at universities nationwide increased more than 12 percent in 2007 over the previous year.

According to this free report, which included responses from more than 2,500 colleges, approximately 3.94-million students, a little more than 20 percent of the total student population in higher education, enrolled in at least one online course in the fall of 2007.

The distance education movement is beginning to have an impact on both our precollege and higher education systems of schooling. As an example, starting in fall 2009, precollege students in Florida can do their entire schooling via distance learning. See http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-virtual1008nov10,0,978666.story.

Student Participation in Discussions
A synchronous distance learning course often makes provisions for students to engage in discussions with each other. It is common for the course instructor to require participation—for example, by specifying the minimal number of contributions each students must make.

Often, this is a poor approach. Many students do not make worthwhile contributions, and the contributed comments may well bunch up near a "due" date.

Part of the trouble here is the nature of the topic being discussed. What might a student gain from making a contribution or reading the contributions of others? The amount of learning might well be small relative to the time and effort required to fully participate.

This leads to the idea of both the teacher and the students being involved in developing "discussable" questions.

A related idea is to have one or more discussion leaders "in charge" of each discussion question. They must facilitate the discussion and then write up summary.

Carnegie Mellon
Parry, Marc (8/3/09) Obama's Great Course Giveaway. Clues to a grand online-education plan emerge from the college and the experts that may have inspired it. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 8/5/09: http://chronicle.com/article/Obamas-Great-Course-Giveaway/47530/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.

Quoting from the article:


 * Logan Stark's classmates scramble for courses with professors who top instructor-rating Web sites. But when the California Polytechnic State University student enrolled in a biochemistry class on the San Luis Obispo campus, he didn't need to sweat getting the best.


 * It was practically guaranteed.


 * That's because much of the class was built by national specialists, not one Cal Poly professor. It's a hybrid of online and in-person instruction. When Mr. Stark logs in to the course Web site at midnight, a bowl of cereal beside his laptop, he clicks through animated cells and virtual tutors, a digital domain designed by faculty experts and software engineers.


 * … Mr. Stark's class is one of about 300 around the world to use online course material—both the content and the software that delivers it—developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative. If the Obama administration pulls off a $500-million-dollar online-education plan, proposed in July as one piece of a sweeping community-college aid package, this type of course could become part of a free library available to colleges nationwide.


 * … The government would pay to develop these "open" classes, taking up the mantle of a movement that has unlocked lecture halls at universities nationwide in recent years—a great course giveaway popularized by the OpenCourseWare project's free publication of 1,900 courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Millions worldwide have used these online materials. But the publication cost—at MIT, about $10,000 a course—has impeded progress at the community-college level, says Stephen E. Carson, external-relations director for MIT OpenCourseWare.


 * … The cost of each course: probably about $1-million, although development would cost less "if you did a number of them," Mr. Smith says.


 * When asked why government should get involved, Mr. Smith responds that its help "would make those courses available to anyone, which is not the case now—and wouldn't be the case if the government didn't do it."

Cost to Develop a Course
It is possible to convert a traditional face-to-face course into an online course, and this can be done quite inexpensively. As an example, one might just video the course lectures, put them online, and make up assignments that are submitted electronically. Or, in place of lectures one might make use of more extensive reading assignments and also draw on multimedia presentations that are readily available on the Web. The course can be "jazzed up" by making provisions for electronic interaction among studetns and by perhaps requiring such interaction.

Using such approaches, a semester-length or quarter-length high school or college course can be developed at nominal cost, such as $10,000. Once created, it can be incrementally improved and kept up to date by the people who are "teaching" the course.

Now, contrast that figure with the proposed $250,000 per course discussed in the article:


 * Keller, Josh and Parry. Marc (5/9/2010). U. of California Considers Online Classes, or Even Degrees. The Chronicaleof Higher Education. Retrieved 5/14/2010 from http://chronicle.com/article/In-Crisis-U-of-California/65445/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.'' Quoting from the article:
 * Online education is booming, but not at elite universities—at least not when it comes to courses for credit.

Leaders at the University of California want to break that mold. This fall they hope to put $5-million to $6-million into a pilot project that could clear the way for the system to offer online undergraduate degrees and push distance learning further into the mainstream.


 * The vision is UC's most ambitious—and controversial—effort to reshape itself after cuts in public financial support have left the esteemed system in crisis.


 * Supporters of the plan believe online degrees will make money, expand the number of California students who can enroll, and re-establish the system's reputation as an innovator.

Or, contrast that with the current cost of perhaps $2 million a course for the highly interactive intelligent computer-assisted learning courses being developed by Carnegie Mellon. The following article suggest that mass production of such courses may bring the price down to $1 million each.


 * Parry, Marc (8/3/09) Obama's Great Course Giveaway. Clues to a grand online-education plan emerge from the college and the experts that may have inspired it. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 8/5/09: http://chronicle.com/article/Obamas-Great-Course-Giveaway/47530/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.

And, of course, one can contrast these cost estimates with the costs of making 45 to 50 minute weekly television program (perhaps $2 million to $5 million per episode), "low budget" movies (perhaps $5 million to $20 million),and higher budget movies which now can cost $100 million and on up.

We also know about costs to develop a reasonably high quality video game. Here, the price range is quite broad, perhaps from about $4 million to $40 million of more. See:


 * Morris, Chris (3/18/2010). As video game development costs rise, so do risks. Retrieved 5/14/2010 from http://www.cnbc.com/id/35932496/As_Video_Game_Development_Costs_Rise_So_Do_Risks. Quoting from the article:


 * When Sony released the eagerly anticipated “God of War III” this week, it wasn’t just hoping the game would be a blockbuster; it was counting on it.


 * The third installment in the hyper-violent, but trend setting series is one of the biggest PlayStation 3 games of the year (if not the biggest). It’s also one of the most expensive.


 * The game’s final price tag totaled a reported $44 million – and that’s before marketing expenses are added into the mix.

We know a lot about teaching and learning. There is an extensive amount of accumulated research and practitioner knowledge. We also know a lot about the production of high quality multimedia. Good quality distance learning draws on the research and practitioner base and on the video and game industry knowledge and skills.

There has been quite a lot of research on the effectiveness of distance learning. However, we have only a modest base of research on the potentially significantly larger effectiveness of more costly courses. Can we produce significantly better and faster student learning by spending more in course development? Note also that part of the more costly course may well be a design that cuts down in costs of interacting with a student taking the course. Thus, we need further research on the "total cost of student learning" in the various forms of face-to-face and distance learning courses we currently have and/or will create in the future.

If the types of data given above interest you, you may want to watch the 55 minute video at http://video.pbs.org/video/1485280975/program/979358040. This video is about private higher education, and it contains data about the way the income from their distance education courses is spent. It might be typical to spend 20% to 25% on advertising and 10% to 20% to pay for instructors. Of course, there are other staffing expenses and computer costs. However, such a "business" can be highly profitable.

10 Principles
10 Principles (2/11/2010). 10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education. Faulty Focus. Retrieved 2/11/2011 from http://www.facultyfocus.com/free-reports/principles-of-effective-online-teaching-best-practices-in-distance-education/?c=FF&t=F110211.

Here are the first two in the list:

1 Show Up and Teach — The necessity of this statement is borne of the misimpression that the online class “teaches itself.” Since most of the course is already authored and designed for online delivery, instructors may believe they simply need to serve as the proverbial “guide on the side” as the students navigate the learning system. Not true!

2 Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies — The online instructor can help create a successful learning experience by practicing proactive course management strategies such as monitoring assignment submissions, and communicating and reminding students of missed and/or upcoming deadlines.