Distance education has been practiced for more than one hundred years. The first form of distance education was through the mail system in a correspondence course.
The progression of distance learning over the years was spawned on the part of creativity and necessity to meet the objective of two diverse goals. An example was in the audio recording made by Dr. Rosemary Dawson, referring to travelling to another country to lecture and teach while still delivering materials to the “home university” giving the illusion of being two places at once.
My first impression of the newer technology and distance education was what was first practiced by Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax Nova Scotia.
Since the early 80’s MSU has offered a number of undergraduate and graduate courses via distance. They would broadcast the classroom on a local channel (8am Sunday morning) and then the students met via telephone for weekly discussion.
For students who did not have cable tv and could not receive the broadcast classroom, video tapes were sent out to the students with again assigned meeting time to meet for discussion and dialoguing about the subject matter. All exams were done by proxy with an adjudicator managing the exam.
The first form of online delivery I taught was similar to what we are using here at Walden University. I used the tool called The Learning Manager and my course materials was submitted to the systems analyst for input. There wasn’t the use of videos or audio files as most computers and students had dial-up modems. We had a discussion board where students responded to questions posed and is very much a self-study course.
Now I am using mixtures of teaching.
The increase of technology tools for classroom whether it be an educational institute or a business, has enormous potential. The growth of distance learning in a corporate environment will expand exponentially in the current economy as corporation cannot justify expenses for classroom training that is not local. The business has to stay on top and deliver quality pieces of eLearning and blended classrooms to meet this growing demand.
As Dr. Simmonds surmised in the video this week, we are just at the tip of the ice berg in terms of the expansion of distance teaching and distance learning.
References:
Dawson, Dr Rosemary, n.d. Auditory Introduction from Roasemary retieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6052001
Simmonds, Dr. n.d., Distance Education: The Next Generation retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6052001
Dringus, Laurie P., Terrell, Steve, The Framework for Directed Online Learning Environments, Higher Education, Volume 2, Issue 1, October 1999, Pages 55-67
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