Theory and Practice for Distance Education

A new world of distance education demands new thinking. Key components to completing the distance educational system requires that institutions determine how the process is designed, delivered, integrated, and supported. Unfortunately, educational administrators tend to view distance education merely as a process of taking existing readings, exercises, handouts, and posting them to the Web. While this approach may seem cost effective, such an approach is not educationally effective. Although the meaningful transition to e-education has just begun, determining measures of effectiveness and efficiency requires innovations in social and political thought beyond the advances in technology. The educational process requires feedback from the professor, from the student, and from the wider community, especially businesses who hire the graduates. As e-learning and higher education reach new heights, they are changing the functions of the university. E-learning changes all the ground rules, including time, distance, and pedagogy. We now have new ways to reach and interact with students, present rich content in courses, and deliver the technologies of the smart classroom to students, wherever they are in the world.

Supplemental Web Sites

The population of today’s learners can be described as being more than 25 years old, with a job and/or family responsibilities. The vast student body requires a flexible program that can accommodate job-related travel, need for a more mobile learning environment and a learning method which may be more entertaining and interactive than the traditional “stand and lecture” method. In the process of innovating with technology in the college curriculum, business schools are confronted with the issue of achieving a balance between the issues of “richness” and “reach.” While members of the faculty see an opportunity to enrich education, administrators see an opportunity to realize economies of scale. Results from this empirical study show that students perceive a face-to-face course supported by a web site to be useful in enhancing their academic performance. Almost all the students made use of the classroom lectures and web site resources and did not feel the need to stay away from lectures.

A Strategy to Expand the University Education Paradigm

To date most online content and experiences have been packaged in a traditional “class” format and delivered using a web site posted on a provider’s server. This chapter suggests a slight deviation from this approach for packaging and delivering Internet education. It suggests a look beyond the “class” delivery approach. The premise for this strategy is the belief that the greatest strength of the Internet for education may lie in delivery of class “components,” not classes, themselves. These online components can be used to supplement and add value to the traditional class experience, not replace it. The strategy proposes that the university provide, sponsor, administer and maintain an automated online portal to post and sell faculty-created material. An “e-store” selling products developed by the university’s faculty members. It is hoped that universities will explore this idea to develop new ways of packaging and delivering education that better reward the faculty developer, help pay for the service and also add “value” to the education experience.

The Effect of Culture on Email Use

This chapter examines how students from different cultural backgrounds use email to communicate with other students and teachers. The South Pacific region, isolated, vast, and culturally diverse, was selected as an appropriate research environment in which to study the effect of cultural differences and educational technology on distance learning. The context of this research was two competing distance education institutions in Fiji, the University of the South Pacific and Central Queensland University. Three research questions were addressed: Does cultural background affect the extent to which students use email to communicate with educators and other students for academic and social reasons? Does cultural background affect the academic content of email messages? Does cultural background influence students’ preference to ask questions or provide answers using email instead of face-to-face communication? To address these issues, two studies were conducted in parallel. Subjects were drawn from business information systems and computer information technology classes at the University of the South Pacific (USP) and Central Queensland University (CQU). Four hundred students at USP were surveyed about their email usage. In the CQU study, postings to course discussion lists by 867 students were analyzed. The results of these studies suggest that there are significant differences in the use of email by students from different cultural backgrounds.

Modular Web-Based Teaching and Learning Environments as a Way to Improve E-Learning

This chapter can be assigned to the main fields of new and innovative educational paradigms and learning models, innovative modes of teaching and learning based on technological capabilities and strengths and weaknesses of technologies as effective teaching tools. It covers the construction of e-learning materials using a modular design approach in order to meet the technical and didactical requirements for the optimum operation of distance learning scenarios. First, it addresses the development path and substantial deficits of conventional e-learning materials. After this, it gives an overview of the requirements the supplier thinks necessary to develop high quality and state-of-the-art e-learning materials. In the following section, the customer’s needs with regard to the e-learning materials will be addressed. Accommodating both parties and securing high quality requires a high flexibility for configuration of a Web-based learning and teaching environment. The next section introduces the respective concept based on modular structures. The content-related design of study modules will be shown with the support of an example taken from the education network WINFOLine.

How Distance Programs will Affect Students, Courses, Faculty and Institutional Futures

Designed properly, distance education classes can be at least as effective and, in some ways, even more effective than face-to-face courses. The tools and technologies used for distance education courses facilitate learning opportunities not possible in the face-to-face classroom. Distance programs are accelerating changes that are challenging students, faculty, and the university, itself. Currently, most faculty are rewarded for the quality of instruction, as well as their external funding and their research. Often, university administrators focus more attention on the efficiency of teaching than on its effectiveness. In the future, as the quality of distance learning increases, the primary factor for success will be the faculty’s commitment to excellence in teaching. Many institutions will be forced to reevaluate the quality of teaching as the institution becomes more visible to the public, to legislators who support higher education, and to prospective students.

Financing Expensive Technologies in an Era of Decreased Funding

The great Greek philosopher Aristotle noted that learning is the outcome of teaching and practice. Clearly, learning is not confined to classroom lectures exclusively. In the past several decades, educators explored the possibilities of providing learning experiences to remote students. With the improvements in technology and the growing popularity of Internet use, online learning caught the attention of both corporations and educational institutions. In this chapter, we will discuss the two common approaches higher education institutions pursue when implementing online learning programs and provide the rationale for their success or failure. Following, we will define, propose, and categorize a set of eight key elements of a successful online learning program implementation in an era of decreased funding. The following chapter also contains a case study about the development of a successful, self-funding, online learning program in the college of business administration at a state university in the Southeast US, followed by a summary and discussion.

Return on Investment for Distance Education Offerings

The basis for this chapter is to identify ways in which institutions can maximize their return on investment for distance education offerings through the appropriate and timely re-purposing of the online content for different markets. This will be presented based upon a model of the author’s design titled, “Transformative Income Generation,” which is a combination of content re-purposing based upon an understanding of the various potential markets in an entrepreneurial manner. The model being presented represents one way to maximize return on investment and, while other ways exist, it is the author’s intention to stimulate the reader to consider online educational content, albeit distance education materials, from a different perspective.

Online Assessment in High Education

This chapter acknowledges the challenges surrounding assessment techniques in online education at the higher education level. It asks specifically, “How do we know our online students are learning?” To get closer to answering this question with confidence, various strategies ranging from participation techniques to online group work, peer and self-assessment, and journals and portfolios are described. The role of online mentoring as a supplementary strategy is also introduced. The chapter concludes with a survey of advantages and disadvantages of the various strategies.

Design Levels for Distance and Online Learning

This chapter describes a multi-level design process for online and distance learning programs that builds on a philosophical base grounded in learning theory, instructional design, and the principles of the process of change. This chapter does the following: (1) describes a six-level design process promoting congruency and consistency at the institution, infrastructure, program, course, activity and assessment level; (2) describes a conceptual framework for designing online and distance learning programs; and (3) suggests a set of principles and questions derived from that framework. The principles are derived from the Vygotskian theory of cognition that focuses on four core elements of any teaching and learning experience — the learner, the faculty/teacher/mentor, the content /knowledge /skill to be acquired/or problem to be solved, and the environment or context within which the experience will occur. This chapter includes a set of principle-based questions for designing effective and efficient online and distance learning programs.