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Defining Distance Education
- Lee Ayers Schlosser and Michael Simonson
Preface
Distance Education has become a major topic of interest in the field of educational communications and technology.
Since a variety of definitions for distance education have been offered, it was considered important that a standard definition be established. The Definitions and Terminology Committee of The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), chaired by Al Januszewski, was asked to define Distance Education and provide a glossary of related terms.
This monograph is designed as a companion to “Instructional Technology: The Definition and Domains of the Field” by Barbara Seels and Rita Richey that was also sponsored by the Definitions and Terminology Committee of AECT. The definition offered in this monograph was based on background work published in “Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education, 2nd Ed.” (2003). Glossary terms were compiled by Lee Ayers Schlosser of Southern Oregon University and the Appendix was prepared by Al Stiles of the Simulation,
Training and Research Center. Special thanks to Mary Herring of the University of Northern Iowa and Cynthia Elliott of Fort Hays State University.
Simonson
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Defining Distance Education
Distance education is defined as:
institution-based, formal education
where the learning group is separated, and
where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources, and instructors.
There are four main components to this definition.
First is the concept that distance education is institutionally based.
This is what differentiates distance education from self-study.
While the institution referred to in this definition could be a traditional educational school or college, increasingly there are emerging non-traditional institutions that offer education to students at a distance. Businesses, companies, and corporations are offering instruction at a distance.
Many educators and trainers are advocating the accreditation of institutions that offer distance education to add credibility, improve quality, and eliminate diploma mills.
The second component of the definition of distance education is the concept of separation of the teacher and student. Most often, separation is thought of in geographic terms - teachers are in one location and students in another. Also implied by the definition is the separation of teachers and students in time. Asynchronous distance education means that instruction is offered and students access it at separate times, or any time it is convenient to them. Finally, intellectual separation of teachers and learners is important. Obviously, teachers have an understanding of the concepts presented in a course that students may not possess. In this case the reduction of separation is a goal of the distance education system.
The third component of the definition of distance education is Interactive telecommunications.
Interaction can be synchronous or asynchronous - at the same time, or at different times. Interaction is critical, but not at the expense of content. In other words, it is important that learners be able to interact with each other, with resources of instruction, and with their teacher.
However, interaction should not be the primary characteristic of instruction, but should be available, commonplace and relevant.
The words "telecommunications systems" implies electronic media, such as television, telephone, and the Internet, but need not be limited to only electronic media. Telecommunications is defined as "communicating at a distance." This definition includes communication with the postal system, as in correspondence study, and other non-electronic methods for communication. Obviously, as electronic telecommunications systems improve and become more pervasive it is likely that they will be the mainstay of modern distance education systems. However, older, less sophisticated systems of telecommunication will continue to be important.
Finally, is the concept of connecting learners, resources and instructors. This means that there are instructors that interact with learners and that resources are available that permit learning to occur. Resources should be subjected to instructional design procedures that organize them into learning experiences that promote learning, including resources that can be observed, felt, heard, or completed.
The definition of distance education includes these four components.
If one or more are missing then the event is something different, if only slightly, than distance education. It is also important to recognize that distance education includes both distance teaching and distance learning.
The development, design, management and evaluation of instruction (Seels and Richey, 1994) fall under the heading of distance teaching. Utilization of learning experiences is distance learning.
According to the definition of distance education, distance learning is not possible without distance teaching.
This definition is not the only one and certainly is not the first offered for distance education.
As a matter of fact, distance education has been defined from a number of perspectives (보는 방법 a way of regarding situations or topics etc.) over the years.
For example, Rudolf Manfred Delling said,
Distance education is a planned and systematic activity which comprises the choice, didactic교훈적 preparation and presentation of teaching materials as well as the supervision and support of student learning and which is achieved by bridging the physical distance between student and teacher by means of at least one appropriate technical medium.
For Hilary Perraton (1988),
distance education is an educational process in which someone removed in space and/or time from the learner conducts a significant proportion of the teaching.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement defines distance education as “the application of telecommunications and electronic devices which enable students and learners to receive instruction that originates from some distant location.”
Typically, the learner may interact with the instructor or program directly, and may meet with the instructor on a periodic basis.
Grenville Rumble (1989) offered the following four-part definition of distance education:
In any distance education process there must be: a teacher; one or more students; a course or curriculum that the teacher is capable of teaching and the student is trying to learn; and a contract, implicit or explicit, between the student and the teacher or the institution employing the teacher, which acknowledges their respective teaching-learning roles.
Distance education is a method of education in which the learner is physically separate from the teacher. It may be used on its own, or in conjunction with other forms of education, including face-to-face.
In distance education learners are physically separated from the institution that sponsors the instruction.
The teaching/learning contract requires that the student be taught, assessed, given guidance and, where appropriate, prepared for examinations that may or may not be conducted by the institution. This must be accomplished by two-way communication. Learning may be undertaken individually or in groups; in either case it is accomplished in the physical absence of the teacher.
For Desmond Keegan (1986), the following four definitions were central to an attempt to identify the elements of a single, unifying definition of distance education:
1. The French government, as part of a law passed in 1971, defined distance education as education which either does not imply the physical presence of the teacher appointed to dispense it in the place where it is received or in which the teacher is present only on occasion or for selected tasks.
2. According to Borje Holmberg, distance education covers the various forms of study at all levels which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in lecture rooms or on the same premises but which, nevertheless, benefit from the planning, guidance and teaching of a
supporting organization.
3. Otto Peters emphasized the role of technology, saying that distance teaching/education (Fernunterricht) is a method of imparting knowledge, skills and attitudes which is rationalized by the application of division of
labor and organizational principles as well as by the extensive use of technical media, especially for the
purpose of reproducing high quality teaching material which makes it possible to instruct great numbers of
students at the same time wherever they live. It is an industrialized form of teaching and learning.
4. For Michael Moore, the related concept of “distance teaching” was defined as the family of instructional methods in which the teaching behaviors are executed apart from the learning behaviors, including those that in a contiguous situation would be performed in the learner’s presence, so that communication between the teacher and the learner must be facilitated by print, electronic, mechanical or other devices.
Keegan identified five main elements of these definitions, using them to compose a comprehensive definition of distance education:
1. The quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learner throughout the length of the learning process (this distinguishes it from conventional face-to-face education).
2. The influence of an educational organization both in the planning and preparation of learning materials and in the provision of student support services (this distinguishes it from private study and teach-yourself programs).
3. The use of technical media.print, audio, video or computer.to unite teacher and learner and carry the
content of the course.
4. The provision of two-way communication so that the student may benefit from or even initiate dialogue (this distinguishes it from other uses of technology in education).
5. The quasi-permanent absence of the learning group throughout the length of the learning process so that people are usually taught as individuals and not in groups, with the possibility of occasional meetings for both didactic and socialization purposes.
Garrison and Shale (1987) argued that, in light of advances in distance education delivery technologies, Keegan’s definition was too narrow and did not correspond to the existing reality as well as to future possibilities. While declining to offer a definition of distance education, Garrison and Shale offered the following three criteria they regarded as essential for characterizing the distance education process:
1. Distance education implies that the majority of educational communication between (among) teacher and student(s) occurs noncontiguously.
2. Distance education must involve two-way communication between (among) teacher and student(s) for the purpose of facilitating and supporting the educational process.
3. Distance education uses technology to mediate the necessary two-way communication.
Keegan’s definition and the definitions preceding it define the traditional view of distance education. Rapid changes in society and technology are challenging these traditional definitions.
Emerging Definitions
The contemporary period is often characterized as one of unpredictable change. Globalization, brought on by supersonic air travel, satellite television, computer communications, and societal changes, has inspired new ways of looking at distance education. Edwards (1995) uses the term open learning to describe a new way of looking at education in a quickly changing and diverse world. He indicates that distance education and open learning are two distinct approaches to education. While he does not define the two, he states that distance education provides distance learning opportunities using mass-produced courseware to a mass market.
In contrast, open learning places greater emphasis on the current specific needs and/or markets available by recognizing local requirements and differences instead of delivering an established curriculum. Open learning shifts from mass production and mass consumption to a focus on local and individual needs and requirements. Edwards states that this can occur outside of the traditional organization of education. This is a major difference between his description of open learning and the previous definitions of distance education.
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A Brief History of Distance Education
Distance education seems a new idea to most educators of today. However, the concepts that form the basis of
distance education are more than a century old. Certainly, there has been a growth and change in distance education
recently, but it is the long traditions of the field that continue to give it direction for the future. This section offers a
brief history of distance education, from correspondence study, to electronic communications, to distance teaching
universities.
Correspondence Study
The roots of distance education are at least 160 years old. An advertisement in a Swedish newspaper in 1833 touted
the opportunity to study “Composition through the medium of the Post.” In 1840, England’s newly established
penny post allowed Isaac Pitman to offer shorthand instruction via correspondence. Three years later, instruction
was formalized with the founding of the Phonographic Correspondence Society, precursor of Sir Isaac Pitman’s
Correspondence Colleges.
Distance education, in the form of correspondence study, was established in Germany by Charles Toussaint and
Gustav Langenscheidt, who taught language in Berlin. Correspondence study crossed the Atlantic in 1873 when
Anna Eliot Ticknor founded a Boston-based society to encourage study at home. The Society to Encourage Studies
at Home attracted more than 10,000 students in 24 years. Students of the classical curriculum (mostly women)
corresponded monthly with teachers, who offered guided readings and frequent tests.
From 1883 to 1891, academic degrees were authorized by the state of New York through the Chautauqua College of
Liberal Arts to students who completed the required summer institutes and correspondence courses. William Rainey
Harper, the Yale professor who headed the program, was effusive in his support of correspondence study, and
confident in the future viability of the new educational form:
The student who has prepared a certain number of lessons in the correspondence school knows more of the
subject treated in those lessons, and knows it better, than the student who has covered the same ground in
the classroom.
The day is coming when the work done by correspondence will be greater in amount than that done in the
classrooms of our academies and colleges; when the students who shall recite by correspondence will far
outnumber those who make oral recitations.
In 1891, Thomas J. Foster, editor of the Mining Herald, a daily newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania, began offering a
correspondence course in mining and the prevention of mine accidents. His business developed into the
International Correspondence Schools, a commercial school whose enrollment exploded in the first two decades of
the 20th century, from 225,000 in 1900 to more than 2 million in 1920.
In 1886, H. S. Hermod, of Sweden, began teaching English by correspondence. In 1898 he founded Hermod’s, which
would become one of the world’s largest and most influential distance teaching organizations.
Correspondence study continued to develop in Britain with the founding of a number of correspondence institutions,
such as Skerry’s College in Edinburgh in 1878 and University Correspondence College in London in 1887. At the
same time, the university extension movement in the United States and England promoted the correspondence
method. Among the pioneers in the field were Illinois Wesleyan in 1877 and the University Extension Department of
the University of Chicago in 1892.
Illinois Wesleyan offered bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees as part of a program modeled on the Oxford,
Cambridge, and London model. Between 1881 and 1890, 750 students were enrolled; and in 1900, nearly 500 students
were seeking degrees. However, concerns about the quality of the program prompted a recommendation that it be
terminated by 1906.
Correspondence study was integral to the University of Chicago. The school, founded in 1890, created a university
extension as one of its five divisions, the first such division in an American university. The extension division was
divided into five departments: lecture study, class study, correspondence teaching, library, and training.
The correspondence study department of the University of Chicago was successful, at least in terms of numbers.
Each year, 125 instructors taught 3,000 students enrolled in 350 courses. Nevertheless, enthusiasm within the
university for the program waned, partly for financial reasons.
At the University of Wis consin, the development of the “short course” and farmers’ institutes in 1885 formed the
foundation for university extension. Six years later, the university announced a program of correspondence study led
by the eminent historian, Frederick Jackson Turner. However, as at the University of Chicago, faculty interest waned.
Further, public response was minimal, and the correspondence study program was discontinued in 1899.
Correspondence study would have to wait another seven years to be reborn under a new, stronger, correspondence
study department within the school’s university extension division.
Moody Bible Institute, founded in 1886 formed a correspondence department in 1901 that continues today with a
record of over one million enrollments from all over the world. Correspondence study/distance education has had a
significant impact on religious education that emphasizes the social context within which a student lives.
Distance education began to enrich the secondary school curriculum in the 1920s. Students in Benton Harbor,
Michigan, were offered vocational courses in 1923, and six years later, the University of Nebraska began
experimenting with correspondence courses in high schools.
In France, the Ministry of Education set up a government correspondence college in response to the impending
Second World War. Although the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondences was established for the
education of children, it has since become a huge distance teaching organization for adult education.
The original target groups of distance education efforts were adults with occupational, social, and family
commitments. This remains the primary target group today. Distance education provided the opportunity to widen
intellectual horizons, as well as the chance to improve and update professional knowledge. Further, it stressed
individuality of learning and flexibility in both the time and place of study.
Two philosophies of distance education became identifiable. The full liberalism of programs offered by Hermod’s, in
Sweden, emphasized the free pacing of progress through the program by the student. Other programs, such as those
offered by the University of Chicago, offered a more rigid schedule of weekly lessons.
Electronic Communications
In Europe, there was a steady expansion of distance education, without radical changes in structure, but with
gradually more sophisticated methods and media employed. Audio recordings were used in instruction for the blind
and in language teaching for all students. Laboratory kits were used in such subjects as electronics and radio
engineering. Virtually all large-scale distance teaching organizations were private correspondence schools.
In the United States, advances in electronic communications technology helped determine the dominant medium of
distance education. In the 1920s, at least 176 radio stations were constructed at educational institutions, although
most were gone by the end of the decade. The surviving stations were mostly at land grant colleges.
In the early 1930s, experimental television teaching programs were produced at the University of Iowa, Purdue
University, and Kansas State College. However, it was not until the 1950s that college credit courses were offered via
broadcast television: Western Reserve University was the first to offer a continuous series of such courses,
beginning in 1951. Sunrise Semester was a well-known televised series of college courses offered by New York
University on CBS from 1957 to 1982.
Satellite technology, developed in the 1960s and made cost-effective in the 1980s, enabled the rapid spread of
instructional television. Federally funded experiments in the United States and Canada, such as the Appalachian
Education Satellite Project (1974.1975), demonstrated the feasibility of satellite-delivered instruction. However, these
early experiments were loudly criticized for being poorly planned. More recent attempts at satellite-delivered distance
education have been more successful. The first state educational satellite system, Learn/Alaska, was created in 1980.
It offered six hours of instructional television daily to 100 villages, some of them accessible only by air. The privately
operated TI-IN Network, of San Antonio, Texas, has delivered a wide variety of courses via satellite to high schools
across the United States since 1985.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the development of fiber-optic communication systems allowed for the expansion of
live, two-way, high-quality audio and video systems in education. While the initial cost of fiber-optic systems may be
high, the long-term savings and benefits of the technology outweigh the initial costs. Many now consider fiber-optic
delivery systems as the least expensive option for the high quality, two-way audio and video required for live two-
way interactive distance education. The state of Iowa has the largest statewide fiber-optic system. Currently the Iowa
Communications Network (ICN) provides full-motion, two-way interactive video, data (Internet), and voice services
to over 800 Iowa classrooms. In the near future, all school districts, area education agencies, and public libraries in
Iowa will have classrooms connected to the fiber optics of the ICN. The ICN also serves as the backbone for
computer telecommunications, and asynchronous, Internet-based programs are being offered to distant learners.
Over 100,000 hours of formal educational opportunities were offered during the first 18 months of the network’s
service. Recently, 100,000 hours were being offered every month.
Distance education opportunities are quickly growing through the use of computer-mediated communications. Tens
of thousands of networks are connected to the Internet, with millions of people using the Internet worldwide
(Ackermann, 1995). Both credit and noncredit courses have been offered over computer networks since the mid1980s.
In most cases, a teacher organizes the course materials, readings, and assignments. The students read the
material, complete assignments, and participate in on-line discussions with other classmates. The advent of computer
conferencing capabilities has had an impact on the traditional approach to the design of distance education
instruction. Computer conferencing increases the potential for interaction and collaborative work among the
students. This type of collaboration among students was difficult with previous forms of distance education.
In addition, computer networks are a convenient way to distribute course materials to students around the world.
Many faculty members now use the convenient user interface of the World Wide Web to make course materials
available to their students. The British Open University, Fern Universitat of Germany, and the University of Twente
in the Netherlands are some of the leading providers of on-line courses in Europe. In the United States, the American
Open University, Nova Southeastern University, and the University of Phoenix have been traditional leaders in
providing distance education. They, along with many other universities, are now offering hundreds of courses online.
Distance Teaching Universities
The 1962 decision that the University of South Africa would become a distance teaching university brought about a
fundamental change in the way distance education was practiced in much of the world. Another landmark was the
founding, in 1971, of the Open University of the United Kingdom, a degree-giving distance teaching university
offering full degree programs, sophisticated courses, and the innovative use of media (Holmberg, 1986). The Open
University brought heightened prestige to distance education, and spurred the establishment of similar institutions in
industrial nations such as West Germany, Japan, and Canada, as well as in such lesser-developed nations as Sri
Lanka and Pakistan.
While the distance teaching universities shared numerous similarities, they were not identical in their mission or
practice. Two of the largest and most influential, the Open University of the United Kingdom and the German Fern
Universitat, differ widely. The British school favors employed, part-time students of above normal study age, and
allows them to enroll without formal entrance qualifications. By 1984, some 69,000 of its students had completed work
for the Bachelor of Arts degree.
The German Fern Universitat, founded in 1975, offers a more rigorous program than its British counterpart. Despite
strict, formal entrance requirements, it had 28,000 students in 1985. However, the dropout rate is very high, and in its
first decade, only 500 students completed the full curricula for a university degree.
Holmberg (1986) offers numerous political, economic, and educational reasons for the founding of distance teaching
universities, including:
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The need felt in many countries to increase the offerings of university education generally
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A realization that adults with jobs, family responsibilities, and social commitments form a large group of
prospective part-time university students
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A wish to serve both individuals and society by offering study opportunities to adults, among them
disadvantaged groups
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The need found in many professions for further training at an advanced level
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A wish to support educational innovation
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A belief in the feasibility of an economical use of educational resources by mediated teaching
Theory and Distance Education
Most students, and many teachers, cringe at the thought of a discussion of theory. This need not be the case. This
section is designed not to intimidate or to bore, but to inform. Theory is important to the study of distance education
because it has a direct impact on the practice of the field.
Traditionally, theories of distance education have come from sources external to America. Recently, the field in the
United States has matured to the point where indigenous definitions and theories have begun to emerge.
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