The stereotypical view of college instruction is a crowded lecture hall filled with hundreds of students and a professor utilizing lecture as the sole means of instruction. These lectures are typically one-sided where the instructor dispenses information and the students take it in by scribbling furiously into notebooks or trying to keep up on their laptops. Some students may record the lectures and transcribe the notes later. These lectures are different from Socratic teaching methods, where instructors engage students and ask questions to illustrate the points of the lecture. Since students are not engaged directly, there is some pedagogical distance. Students can, however, meet their instructor face-to-face (or contact them via telephone or email) and ask clarifying questions about lectures or assignments. So, there is an element of pedagogical distance even in environments where students are physically present in the same room as the lecturer. Students who would rather minimize the amount of pedagogical distance could consider going to a smaller college or university, where instructors are more hands-on.

In today’s learning world, the word distance learning seems too broad to be truly accurate if we are discussing instruction that is delivered across a geographical distance. In the CECS program at UNT, most of the classes are available online and since driving to Denton from downtown Fort Worth in rush-hour traffic can be alternately maddening or terrifying, I enjoy having the option of working from home. But I have been lucky to have several instructors who bridge the distance gap and interact with their students, making online learning less of a solitary experience. Distance learning, therefore, does not always seem to be applicable. Online learning seems to be a more accurate term for classes offered through such learning management systems as Blackboard or Moodle. Web-based learning could also work. The solution may be to simply be more specific with terminology. If the instruction is available via the Internet, it would be called online learning or web-based learning, depending on preferences. Courses that are offered through closed-caption television could be television-based learning and courses where students mail in written materials have traditionally been known as correspondence courses. All of this could fall under a broader heading called distance learning where we refer to any learning where the student does not interact face-to-face with an instructor. Under that overarching concept would be online learning, correspondence courses (or independent study), television-based learning, and so forth.

Aside from perhaps splitting hairs with terminology, distance learning as an educational concept is certainly a sound one. Whatever methods are employed, effective learning can take place from a distance. Distance learning does require a different mindset for learners. They must have strong metacognitive skills so they can manage their own time and effectively harness their resources. They also have to determine if distance learning works for them as learners. Can they deal with pedagogical distance? Can they complete their assigned tasks by the due date? Do they seek out additional resources aside from the instructor and the course materials?

Online learning, in particular, offers the potential for an immersive learning experience. Courseware can be developed where learners complete tasks in a simulated real-life setting (or even in a virtual world; think of what could be done in an environment like Second Life) under realistic conditions. Clark and Mayer (2003) described these as guided discovery lessons. However, these courses take a long time to develop and a lot of technical expertise to do them. They could be purchased off the shelf for disciplines that lend themselves to problem-based learning, such as nursing. There is something irresistible about exploratory learning. It’s easy to spend hours going from web page to web page, following our own spidery webs of thought and creating our own learning experience.

So, I believe distance learning can be redeemed. We might just need to be more specific in our usage of the term. We can’t presume that distance learning is the same thing as online learning. We can’t even presume that distance learning always means learning situations where the learner and the instructor are separated by geographic distances. That is like saying France is the same thing as Europe, or that a toe is the same thing as a foot.

Clark, R. & Mayer, R. (2003). e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Oliver, M. & Trigwell, K. (2005). Can ‘Blended Learning’ Be Redeemed?, E-learning, 2(1), pp. 17-26.

Peters, O. (1998) Learning and Teaching in Distance Education. London: Kogan Page.

If there are a lot of students who are more technically inclined, ideally these students should be spread out among the other groups.

• American Literature Group Project: Teams of 3-5, depending on class size; exploring different authors in 20th century American Literature; students create websites that highlight an author or a particular work; must have at least 5 connected web pages with graphics and content; students should elect a project manager to check in with the professor weekly and keep the project on-track; files loaded to the class server; students must complete a rubric on their own work and those of their fellow group members, along with responses to other group’s submissions. Students have a month to complete this project.
• Introduction to Video Class: Teams of 3-5, depending on class size; exploring different video shooting and editing techniques; groups must submit a video on a subject of their own choosing, but the video must meet certain criteria (must have some background music, must have credits, must have a script, must use interiors and exteriors, and must be at least 10 minutes long. Groups select roles and elect a project manager who stays in touch with the professor and keeps the project on-track. Students have a month to complete this project. Videos are compressed and uploaded to the class server for evaluation. Rubrics for group and individual performance are completed, and students should post comments about the other videos.
• Performance Analysis Class: Teams of 3-5, depending on class size; groups are responsible for designing a case study to use in a simulated performance analysis assignment. Students should spend two weeks creating the case studies and submitting them to the instructor and to the class. Then, the instructor assigns a case study to each of the groups, providing them with two weeks to come up with a workable solution. Groups should fill out a checklist listing the questions they would ask and the answers they believe they should come back with. Each case study would then be evaluated by the instructor and the group that created the case study.
• Creative Writing Class: Teams of no more than 3; groups are responsible for creating a short writing piece collaboratively. Their goal: the first part of a novel’s opening chapter. This writing piece should be no more than 400-600 words, yet even though it is a collaborative effort, it should look fairly uniform. This process would be more closely managed by the instructor, with each student submitting drafts of his or her sections of the composition and having group meetings discussing the blending process. This project should take 3 weeks but could be stretched to 4.

I think these might be interesting virtual team assignments to explore.

I guess if I had to select a model, I’d be somewhere between the community of inquiry and the independent study model, with a slight leaning towards the community of inquiry. My schedule is often unpredictable, so I appreciate not having to be online at a particular time. Within a week, I can generally manage it. But I don’t like being stuck out here alone, so I do appreciate good discussion forums. I like it when they grow organically instead of being forced, but I well know that if there weren’t a requirement, little would be discussed. With my other online class, the discussion forums aren’t required, so people don’t usually participate unless there’s a question on an assignment.

I had a class years ago (when online learning was still a radical idea)  where part of our grade required us to be online for a class chat at 7 PM on a Wednesday evening. The only problem is that I was also taking a traditional class and I was sitting in the front row, absorbing everything fascinating about Business Law at 7 PM on Wednesdays. No matter, said the instructor, I’ll leave the chat window open and you can just jump on when you get home and write some comments. So I would jump online and lamely leave some comments at the end of the chat session. I didn’t exactly feel like I was part of a community of inquiry. But I know that online learning had to evolve.

One of my favorite online classes had no discussion forums. It didn’t even use an LMS like Blackboard. I had a great online instructor at Tarrant County College for Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. Her course materials were friendly and inviting. Since the class wasn’t using something like Blackboard (it was a homegrown solution, I’m sure), she had more room for personalization. We had reading assignments, weekly quizzes, and she provided supplemental lecture notes. Since you didn’t know exactly where the quiz questions would come from (the chapter or the lecture notes), you were behooved to study everything. And she told you plainly why: because the instructor wrote the exams, reading her lecture notes helped you get familiar with the way she used language. You were therefore better prepared for her exam questions. We met before each unit exam for a face-to-face review session, where she filled in the gaps and answered questions. Even at 8 AM on a Saturday, each review session was standing room only. But she encouraged us to form study groups and work together on each unit of instruction, so we formed a community of inquiry on our own using email and chat software. Exams were administered in the testing center where proctors watched y0u like a hawk, so no chance of cheating there even if you wanted to.

I’ve had other classes that had face-to-face meetings and online coursework, and I found that I enjoyed them. One of my program classes required periodic class meetings on Saturdays, and I found that even though each session was three hours long and I often staggered out into the sunshine in a daze, I enjoyed that class a great deal. Having the face to face sessions personalized it more. I felt more connected.

Even so, I’d rather have online classes than sit in a classroom all the time!

I like the concept of Reusable Learning Objects, and I like the flexibility that they offer instructional designers.Prior to the reading assignment, I had thought all RLOs were tracked in Learning Management Systems. Many of them are, but so much can actually be an RLO. It can be a reusable learning object without necessarily being a sharable content object. They are used all the time in business settings. The typical “forward-thinking” message that appears under press releases can be considered an RLO. It’s something the communication designer can plug in every time. Once the verbiage is approved, why reinvent the wheel?

I use a Learning Management System that supports two of the more common standards for building RLOs and deploying them through an LMS: AICC and SCORM. We build content objects (i.e. – a presentation, a quiz, etc.) and those objects are tracked using SCORM standards. I can pull a query to find out how a person answered a quiz, how much time was spent on the assignment, and whether or not the assignment was completed. There are other status commands that SCORM sends back to a computer system, but those are some of the major ones.

One of my former supervisors said that he had yet to see a strong use of SCORM in the way it was truly meant to be used. What I think he meant was that most companies just do not design their instruction to be so granular that it can be managed in an LMS and reused over and over again.I’ll have to take his word for that, and I’m sure there are those who would disagree with him. Ideally, if you took a quiz on thermonuclear basics, for instance, you shouldn’t have to take it again later. Or if thermonuclear basics was part of a larger course on thermonuclear physics, you would already be covered for the thermonuclear basics section.

We do not reuse quizzes over and over again. We could create question banks that focused on particular knowledge areas over and over again. Our enemy is the same as it is for so many others: time. If we were a learning company, or perhaps anything but a retail company, we would probably have the luxury of spending more time designing training and taking full advantage of RLOs. But our company moves at top speed and there isn’t a lot of patience for designing the training so that it’s easier to manage. The instructional design isn’t even as important as getting it out there in plenty of time for review. But that’s just a reality of business.

But our class study on RLOs made me think of things differently. I didn’t think we used them, but we really do. It’s just not very formal. It’s not the greatest long-term strategy, but it’s certainly workable. It helps us meet our goal of rapid-design and rapid-delivery.

ConceptualMap_OnlineLearning_SLINDSEY (PowerPoint)

View the PowerPoint in Slide Show view if you want to hear the narration. I apologize in advance – I’m not much of a narrator.

SLindsey_ConceptMap_OnlineLearning1 (PDF)

• Affective: I am not overly emotional in my postings. After all, it is an academic setting and conducive to a more cerebral approach. I use the occasional emoticon. I do try to apply some humor, since I can’t really help myself in that regard and I think that we could all benefit from taking a more humorous approach to things. I had a former vice president who said to take your work seriously, but never to take yourself all that seriously. And I do self-disclose a bit if I think it’s applicable to the discussion. I’m not an online instructor in the classroom sense of the term. If I were providing online training in a corporate environment where most employees had desk jobs, I could probably be a  bit more traditional. My audience is retail store personnel, and that requires a very different approach. These learners could care less about different learning styles. They have 15 minutes between customers to complete training, so it has to be quick, concise, and easy to use. The corporate side of online training isn’t as well represented in the CECS program at UNT, so I feel that I need to share it occasionally so people remember that it’s still there.
• Interactive: I think I’m fairly interactive, except that I don’t quote someone’s posting. Actually, that’s just an online preference of mine, since I’ve seen that done in a negative manner all too often and I don’t appreciate it. I had a former co-worker who used to pick apart everything you wrote, looking for holes, and it really got under my skin at times. I will often say, “Good point…. I agree…” If I disagree, I don’t know that I will come out and say that I disagree. I may pose a question suggesting an alternate point of view. I’ve never been directly confrontational, partly to the way I was raised. I don’t feel the need to be so formal unless the instructor has directed that the posts and responses have to be set up in a certain way. (Of course, I feel that the responses become mechanical and rote instead of being truly felt when the structure is forced that way.) In a way, I wish the discussion boards were more like threaded messages. I think they are like that in Moodle, if I’m remembering correctly. A discussion where the threads were woven together would be much more pleasant and truly interactive.
• Cohesive: I enjoy my classmates and I enjoy reading their comments, but I don’t often feel that I’m online to chit-chat with school. So, I don’t always lead off with salutations. I do address them by their names, and I do use collective pronouns. Not only are ‘we’ students in the class, but we’re also potential online instructors of some sort and we share that in common. We’re also part of the learning community at large.

My postings are generally not too lengthy. I try to be as concise as possible. As I’ve gotten older, perhaps I’ve gotten better at editing myself. Or maybe I’ve grown accustomed to building online courses where I have a minimum amount of screen space and still have to get my point across. Or maybe… I get tired of typing.

http://www.sxc.hu/ is a place everyone should bookmark. Why? It’s a wonderful place to get FREE stock photos. Sometimes there are publishing restrictions, such as a request to contact the author when their work is used, but most of them do not have any true licensing requirements provided they are not used for profit. You can’t download them and then resell them. But if you’re designing training and need some lifestyle shots, it’s a great source. The images are almost always of high quality. You do have to resize them.

FotoFlexer is an amazing cloud-based photo editing tool. If your budget does not have room for Photoshop, FotoFlexer does the job and it’s free. It doesn’t do all of the advanced things that Photoshop can do, but you can crop and resize with just a few clicks. The wonderful thing about apps like FotoFlexer is that they are simpler. Photoshop is truly powerful and can do amazing things, but there is a steep learning curve and the software is not cheap. FotoFlexer is a great app to bookmark for anyone.

Need music? I found a site that lets you download short MP3 clips to use as background music. I used one of his clips in a video project last year and it worked great. You just have to give the composer/performer (Kevin MacLeod) proper credit (listing the name of the piece and the composer). I love to explore it and play the different clips. He’s a composer for hire if you have larger projects, but I’ve never used him for that.

And to tie this in with the videos we watched for this week’s assignment, I remember seeing an excellent YouTube video that explains cloud computing, based on the opinions of several technological experts.

I like Moodle, but I don’t think it is as easy-to-use as Blackboard. I’ve used it before as a learner, and while I appreciated that it looked less intimidating overall. If an LMS could have a personality ascribed to it, Moodle would be friendly and easy to approach. Moodle did take some getting used to. But it worked fine and I certainly did not feel that my learning experience was hampered in any way. As far as Moodle goes from an instructor’s standpoint, I felt like I needed some serious training to get used to it. Some parts of it were fairly easy to figure out. I wasn’t sure exactly where to start. I edited a gradebook and created an assessment, and it took several tries to get the assessment to work. I liked the overall look of Moodle better.

Most of my online classes have been administered through Blackboard, and though I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it at times, I’m very familiar with it and I know how to use it. Unless an instructor really customizes it, Blackboard can look comparatively sober next to Moodle. If Moodle is easy-going and friendly, Blackboard is professional and a bit uptight. It doesn’t really draw you in from a visual perspective. But Blackboard is easy to move around in, whether you’re an instructor or a learner. As an instructor, I was able to make some easy adjustments to Blackboard right away.

I could work quite well with either system, but if I were asked to design and launch an online course and I had some extra time to practice, I would probably enjoy using Moodle. But if my timelines were tight, I might prefer sticking with Blackboard. Maybe Blackboard is like Wikipedia, while Moodle is like Google KNOL.

I wake up as late as I can possibly do so and arrive at work at a reasonable hour. My morning activities are pretty routine: quick breakfast, quick shower, quick dress, and quick drive to work. I’ve learned that if I allow myself too much time in the morning, I’ll get busy with a project and not get out the door to work. My roommate usually leaves early, but if she’s there, we’ll have a brief chat about what we expect the day to be like.

I work in a fairly small department — seven people, including our director — and we work together well together as a team. Work is usually 8-9 hours of mostly creative output. I do a lot of writing in my job and I get to play around with graphics and fonts. Many of our e-learning courses are designed in PowerPoint initially and then published to Flash via Articulate Studio (which is an AWESOME tool, by the way). One of the great things about Articulate Studio is the weekly blogs we receive by email that provide additional tips and tricks for rapid e-learning design. We’re always forwarding things to each other, such as “Did you know you could do this with PowerPoint?” or “Here’s a site to get some royalty-free handwriting fonts.” Oftentimes, our training output deals with products or services, and we often have to do research so we have enough material to educate our sales team about an important new technology or a new product category that the company strongly supports. I may spend all afternoon learning about a particular MP3 player, or looking at simulations for activating wireless phones that I might deploy online. Or I might spend some time hunting down tables and building a query so I can generate a report for senior management. To put it in a nutshell, I’m always looking for new information at work to complete a project, answer a question, or resolve a problem. The majority of my research is done online.

I love to talk to people, and I think that is an important way that we all learn. We may not be performing ‘data dumps’ for each other, but if you really listen to someone, you can learn quite a bit. For instance, we may end up talking about recipes that we have made, or how we use technology in our daily lives. We’re not shy with each other and we all like to talk. Discourse — real conversation — is a great way to share information.

When I get home in the evening, I almost always spend some time talking with my roommate. She’s one of those people with whom I can effortlessly talk for hours. Our interests are similar enough — yet different enough — where we can have long conversations about everything from religion to pop culture. I’ll then retire to do homework or perform other household chores. Obviously, I engage in some form of learning with my coursework activities.

I end my day by calling my partner to see how his day went. Sometimes we just share small talk, and sometimes we’ll dig into some of our common interests and have some discussions (i.e. – we both love classic movies). Then I generally curl up with a favorite book, which is often a mystery of some kind, until I’m ready to go to sleep.