Distance education

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Definition

See also: e-learning

A short history

• Late 1800s' Universty of Chicago offers a correspondence program
• 1840 Establishment of the first correspondence school in Europe, the Sir Isaac Pitman Correspondence Colleges (UK)
• 1938 Foundation of the ICCE, the International Council for Correspondence Education
• 1939 Foundation of the CNED, the Centre National d'Éducation à Distance (France)
• 1963 Foundation of the Council for Education by Correspondence, CEC, earlier predecessor of the AECS
• 1967 Foundation of DIFF, the Deutsches Institut für Fernstudien (Germany)
• 1968 Foundation of the European Home Study Council, EHSC, another predecessor of AECS
• 1969 Foundation of the Open University (UK)
• 1974 Establishment of the FernUniversität (Hagen, Germany)
• 1980's Commercial satellite courses in the US
• 1982 The ICCE changes its name to become the ICDE, the International Council for Distance Education
• 1984 Establishment of the Open Universiteit (Netherlands)
• 1985 Foundation of the Association European Correspondence Schools, AECS, successor of the EHSC
• 1987 Foundation of the EADTU, the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities
• 1991 Establishment of EDEN, the European Distance Education Network.

Keegan (1980) quoted by Gunawardena et al. (????: 358) identified six key elements of distance education:

• Separation of teacher and learner
• Influence of an educational organization
• Use of media to link teacher and learner
• Two-way exchange of communication
• Learners as individuals rather than grouped
• Education as an industrialized form

This definition still holds for most varieties. However, together with the Internet boom that brought us for exemple e-learning technology, this definition doesn't hold anymore.

• An increasing variety of various CMC tools allows learners to learn together over a distance
• Traditional institutions entering the market (in particular Universities for master degree levels) using flexible e-learning tools or event video-conferencing don't necessarily adopt any sort of "industrialized" design methodology.

Kinds of distance teaching

Trindade (1993) defined the following variables to define modus operandi of distance learning regimes:

1. Who Learns: population potentially covered by distance education.
2. Who Teaches: assistance and guidance of the student by the tutor/counsellor of the school, training centre or any other.
3. What To Learn: selection of courses/curricula and related contents.
4. When To Learn: period for course attendance, study and assessment.
5. Where To Learn: places wherein to study ( home, training centre, classroom, etc.).
6. How To Learn: learning methods and techniques as well as the media to be used.

We'd add to this

1. Who designs and produces the course

Links

European distance and e-learning network

References

Handbooks and Textbooks

• Gunawardena, Charlotte Nirmalani and Marina Stock McIsaac (accessed 17:21, 11 May 2006 (MEST)). Distance education. In D. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology. On-line version at http://www.aect.org/. Maybe there is an older version in the book (Second edition. New York: NY: Macmillan, pp. 403-437.)

• Moore, Michael G. and William G. Anderson (eds.) (2003). Handbook of Distance Education, Mahwah: Erlbaum, ISBN 0805839240

Studies

• Lou, Yiping, Robert M. Bernard and Philip C. Abrami (2006). Media and Pedagogy in Undergrade Distance Education: A Theory-based Meta-Analysis of Empirical Literature. Educational Technology Research and Development 54 (2), 141-176 ISSN 1042-1629

• Hara, Noriko and Rob Kling (2000). Students' Distress with a Web-based Distance Education Course, Preprint. Published in Information, Communication & Society 3(4): 557-579.

History

• Trindade, Armando Rocha (1993), Basics Of Distance Education, The Conceptual Panorama Of Distance Education And Training, European Distance Education Network (Eden). [1]. This older article contain is still a good primer for certain questions and history.

• James C Taylor, Distance Education Technologies : The Fourth Generation, The University of Southern Queensland, [2]. This text, dated ??? also provides historical insight. It must have been written in the mid-nineties.