An Introduction to Distance Education

Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era

Martha F. Cleveland-Innes, D. Randy Garrison, Martha F. Cleveland-Innes, D. Randy Garrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351681346
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

An Introduction to Distance Education is a comprehensive look at the field of distance education, outlining current theories, practices, and goals that are essential to effective design, delivery, and navigation. As an alternative pedagogical approach, distance education is posited to meet the evolving demands for access, affordability, and quality in higher education. This fully revised and updated second edition reviews the history of distance education while addressing its current influence on the education sector.

Utilizing a student-guided approach, chapters offer pedagogical features to engage and support the teaching and learning process, including:

• questions for reflection, review, and discussion: students can use these questions as triggers for further thoughts related to the topic. Instructors can use these questions for classroom and online discussion
• key quotations: strategically placed throughout the text, these points act as a springboard for further reflection and classroom discussion
• concept definitions: central concepts discussed in the text are defined for students at the end of each chapter.

Driven by seminal contributors who are researching and shaping our understanding and practice of distance education today, An Introduction to Distance Education offers a solid foundation from which to explore and develop new approaches to designing and implementing online courses.

Part I

An Evolving Distance Education

Chapter 1

Teaching and Learning in Distance Education

Continue a New Era

M. F. Cleveland-Innes

Introduction

It has been a decade since the release of An Introduction to Distance Education; Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era, 1st edition. This updated volume continues to address two significant education transformations. One is the evolution, such that it is, of the long-standing foundations of distance education. Second is the role distance education history and foundations have played in an evolving higher education environment. In both cases, pervasive technology and significant social and economic developments are changing the context in which education resides. Online and blended education delivery has emerged in response to these changes. Those attendant to distance education, and the commitment to learner access and independence, want to ensure that instruction remains relevant and effective in an evolving digital age (Beaudoin, 2015). In the “constantly developing interdisciplinary fields where technology has become a significant catalyst” (Bozkurt, 2019, p. 252) delivery mechanisms and opportunities evolve. For distance and mainstream higher education, now seemingly connected in ways previously unavailable, “there is a need to revisit core values and fundamentals where critical pedagogy would have a pivotal role.” (Bozkurt, 2019, p. 252).

Enter the need for new ways of conceiving of and implementing teaching and learning, in distance education, in higher education, and in online and blended higher education. According to Beaudoin (2015), “the introduction of technology into the teaching and learning environment represents a process of disruptive innovation that has not had any truly transformative impact, and indeed, has widened the digital divide” and, as such, “providers of online education, whether administrators, program planners, instructional designers, teachers, student support personnel, and others in key roles are faced with formidable challenges to ensure that distance education and training remains relevant and effective in this digital age” (p. 33).

An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era is a response to this reality. It is a comprehensive examination of the current education context, where distance education is presenting itself, evolving, and making itself known. The modern era of distance and higher education operates in a postmodern, post-Fordist socioeconomic environment. Thus, the post-industrial approach to distance education is a transforming factor in higher education; fundamentally reconceptualizing, restructuring, and significantly reshaping the teaching and learning transaction. This book provides a detailed review of the influence of industrial distance education, and the current changes occurring through the transition to post-industrial society. Most critically, it outlines what must be part of distance education design and delivery for effective education in the twenty-first century.

In the design and delivery of twenty-first-century distance education, online teaching and learning has emerged. Defined as Internet-based learning that delivers content and enables communication between instructor and students, online teaching and learning is rooted in the transaction of distance education and advanced computer and communications technology.¹ Absent from the developing field is a foundation of thought from the fields of distance, higher, and adult education. Previous discussions on the topic of online learning pay little attention to this integration; what reference is available is superficial and separate from the premises of facilitating online learning. This text presents the conceptual and structural foundation of factors contributing to the emergence and successful implementation of online learning. It explains how we get to quality learning outcomes in the post-industrial online environment. This text provides the reader with a rationale, answering the “why” question for the development of new teaching and learning models for a new era.

The content of the book is based upon the research and practice of multiple authors regarding educational approaches and transitions as they are shaped and influenced by new and emerging technologies and broad-based societal change. The premise is that the twenty-first century represents a new era of distance education identified by collaborative communities of inquiry in an online learning environment. The framework and conceptual foundation for the theory and practice of online education emerges from the work reviewed in the Routledge publication, E-Learning in the 21st Century (Garrison, 2016). Research of the editors and colleagues (Cleveland-Innes, Gauvreau, Richardson, Mishra, & Ostashewski) (Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2009; Cleveland-Innes, Garrison, & Kinsel, 2007; Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2004, 2005; Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, T., 2004) shape the theory, perspectives, practical guidelines, and activities described in the book.

Review of the book

The text divides into three main sections. Part I reviews the content of the book overall and the roots and evolution of distance education. These chapters explore the transition to technology-enabled, digital forms as distance and higher education respond to the affordances and requirements of the fourth industrial age; “the massive proliferation of affordable mobile devices, Internet broadband connectivity and rich education content start a trend of transforming how education is delivered” (Xing & Marwala, 2017, p. 7). This section covers the foundations of distance education in the industrial era, as it emerged through correspondence models, the open learning concept, and the development of new pedagogies: theories and practices. Technology and resulting digital forms enabled new ways of designing education, but also constrained innovation within the boundaries of available technologies of the time. Teaching and learning, reconceptualized in ways that shaped new roles for teachers and learners, emerged to accommodate new models for delivering education at a distance. Developments at the time fit within the dominant organizational system, allowing for new specializations, open designs and collaborative, constructivist approaches for the delivery of instruction.

Chapter 2 outlines the evolution of distance education for the reader. The story focuses on the foundational principles and practices of distance education. This is what eventually becomes known as the industrial era of distance education. After describing the industrial era of distance education, we demonstrate that we are entering a new era of distance education. This post-industrial era has emerged in the twenty-first century and is not fully understood or adequately addressed by the scholars in the field.

The history of distance education makes clear a pre-occupation with geographical constraints that used available technologies to neutralize distance and increase access. This contrasts with the modern or post-industrial era that reflects a focus on transactional issues and ubiquitous communications technologies (Garrison, 2000). This developmental framework shapes the structure of this book and the discussions of subsequent chapters.

Part II addresses a changing environment. The hegemony of industrial models set the ideals and limits for distance education and created the opportunity for the formation of new models in post-industrial times; now identified by some as the fourth industrial revolution. The developments of education were and are redirected according to the philosophy and technology of the time. As the twenty-first century approached, information and communications technology and rapid, continuous change shifted assumptions about teaching, learning, and institutional organization. Again, teaching and learning activities, reconceptualized in ways that shaped new roles for teachers and learners, emerged to accommodate new models. Education theories and practices were reshaped by postmodern, constructivist views encompassing strategies of collaborative and lifelong learning, all in support of an information and knowledge society with ubiquitous, networked environments.

Chapter 3 is written by Jimmy Jaldemark. Dr. Jaldemark submits that contemporary education must be redesigned as a tool that supports lifelong learning by using appropriate education design for increasing numbers of diverse students. The historical relationship between distance education and lifelong learning is reviewed, followed by current and future opportunities to align an evolving, technologically enabled distance education to development and support for lifelong learning. Dr. Jaldemark argues that an unbounded lifelong learning, with less focus on formal and informal learning, is important to educations response to societal transformation to a digital economy and political problems at the national and global levels. Here, in the reconceptualizing and redesign of lifelong learning, open and distance educational settings have an important role to play.

In Chapter 4, Heather Kanuka explores the effects of post-Fordism and neoliberal economic structures in higher education. The current economic market effects on higher education systems are described in reference to open and distance education providers. Here, the time-honored on-campus university experience, with flexible program offerings and craft courses, and interpersonal relationships between and among professors and students, are discussed in reference to the ebb and flow of such experiences. These retrospective visions of traditional on-campus experiences, Dr. Kanuka suggests, will continue to be central imperatives. Higher education in an increasingly competitive, globalized world will depend on an ability to respond to market-driven imperatives while not compromising the core values and missions of institutions of higher education represented in this traditional vision. Open and distant education must, then, be provided within these visionary boundaries. Dr. Kanuka predicts that open and distance providers that continue to deliver programs in mass education, Fordist formats, which yielded success previously, will likely see declines similar to the Open University (OUUK) in the following decades.

Bridging the gap between teacher and learner in post-industrial education is the focus of Chapter 5 by Karen Swan. For Dr. Swan, what distinguishes online learning from the distance education of the previous era is not just the digital technologies from which it takes its name, but the pedagogical approaches they enable. Distance education was materials and teacher-centered, online learning is student-centered; where distance education focused on independent study, online learning focuses on collaboration; where distance education was grounded in behaviorist and cognitive psychology, online learning is grounded in social constructivist learning theory. This chapter explores why and how online learning is embracing emerging digital technologies and social constructivist epistemologies. The chapter demonstrates that a particular confluence of emerging technologies, cultural practices, and serendipity has resulted in an online teaching and learning characterized by social constructivist and inquiry-oriented approaches.

Part III looks at the most recent developments of the field, from emerging and disruptive technologies to international competition. The integration of virtual and place-based universities has led us to models of collaborative online and blended learning. The future of distance, distributed, online, and blended education will emerge in technology-enabled institutions with faculty development and training programs and support for the production of virtual spaces and materials.

Chapter 6, by Phil Ice and Melissa Layne, reviews the current state of higher education. Changes are required; there is a role for distance and online learning as the education sector adjusts to new economic and social realities. eLearning includes the rapid proliferation of new applications, communication modalities and competing visions of what the future of technological convergence will look like. Open education resources and the use of artificial intelligence will change cost models and customization. Despite issues revolving around the rapid pace of transformation, contemporary, and emerging technologies allow practitioners benefits; they select from an array of tools that allow for co-construction of knowledge as opposed to mere transmittal of facts. This chapter is both declarative and prophetic.

In Chapter 7, Norm Vaughan reports that 80 percent of all higher education institutions and 93 percent of comprehensive research institutions offer hybrid or blended learning courses – the infusion of web-based technologies into the learning and teaching process. Technologies have created new opportunities for students to interact with their peers, faculty, and content in blended courses and programs. This chapter describes blended learning delivery from three points of view: the perspective of students, faculty, and administration. Vaughan uses a previous systematic review of over 35 studies published between 2001 and 2006. These findings indicate a marked difference as to the benefits and challenges of blended learning from each of these major constituent groups. In comparison to more recent findings such as those from Taylor, Atas, and Ghani (2017), the chapter first explores the similarities and differences that have occurred in blended learning from three perspectives over the past decade. Second, blended learning is examined through the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework. Third, a future research agenda for blended learning is identified.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword: An Attendant Posture
• Part I An Evolving Distance Education
• Part II Distance Education in the Post-industrial Context
• Part III Leading the Change
• Part IV Summary and Conclusions
• Author Biographies
• Index