Advancing Learning, Closing the "Distance" Casebook
contains interesting accounts of Indiana’s most courageous distance education pioneers. The accounts are interesting because they describe teaching and learning approaches that have used a rich variety of technologies¾from live television to the Web, from one-way video and two-way audio to full audio/video interactivity. The educators that the casebook describes are courageous distance education pioneers because they were not distracted by the obstacles or distance education.
And the obstacles these educators have faced are indeed many: for example, realizing halfway through a course that a given technology was not well suited, that security and authentication for quizzes and examinations was a key problem, that it is very difficult to overcome students’ expectations of being entertained as they sat in front of a television, that some on-campus students resented faculty members’ devoting time to distance students, or that the distance students felt left out. However, by far the biggest obstacles were the inordinate demand on the faculty member’s time (which did not diminish after teaching a distance education course the second or third time), and the utter frustration when technology did not work as expected.
As you read the casebook's accounts of other distance educators’ experiences, you will be drawn into the struggles these educators have faced every time they have prepared and taught a technology-enhanced class. Examples of these struggles include deciding which technology or mix of technologies to use; dealing with the loss of face-to-face interaction in order to provide access to all students; giving up the comfort, security, and privacy of the traditional classroom in order to allow "the world" to watch; relinquishing sole authority over a course to permit the incorporation of a team; and addressing such issues as ownership of materials, copyright, and fair use.
As you read the casebook’s accounts, you’ll also see how these committed educators searched¾instinctively or deliberately¾for ways to incorporate the very best pedagogy into their distance education courses. You’ll see how they sought interactivity in spite of physical distance because they knew that the best learning takes place when students are allowed and encouraged to become engaged in the subject matter.
The casebook records many successes worth celebrating; not the least of which is the sense of having served students who otherwise could not have participated in a course. But most important, I believe, are faculty members’ personal successes of rethinking their basic pedagogy and improving their on-campus instruction as a result of their distance education experiences.
The casebook describes some good lessons learned. For example, students in faculty members’ physical presence have tended to ask more questions than students at a distance; students having visual contact with faculty members have tended to ask more questions than students having audio contact only. (One of the casebook’s proposed solutions is to visit each remote site at least once during a course.) Another lesson learned is that distance education courses demand a lot of self-discipline on the part of students; hence, distance education courses perhaps should not be recommended for the typical undergraduate. And the casebook includes what appear to be minor yet powerful insights. For example, one faculty member after watching herself on tape commented, "I was not pleased with my image when I had a somber expression. A smile was much more engaging, and I believe it helped to get students’ attention and increase their interest."
Advancing Learning, Closing the "Distance" Casebook will be very helpful to any educator who is contemplating going the distance education route. In fact, the casebook has the potential of becoming a success story much like Quick Hits. I’m grateful to the faculty members who allowed us to peek into the innermost sanctum of their professional lives, and I commend the editors for assembling this volume.
Erwin Boschmann
Associate Vice President for Distributed Education
Indiana University
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