Theoretical Principles of Distance Education

Desmond Keegan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415089425
• eBook ISBN: 9781134878321
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

According to UNESCO statistics, 10 million of the world's 600 million students study at a distance. Theoretical Principles of Distance Education seeks to lay solid foundations for the education of these students and for the structures within which they study. As a more industrialised form of education provision, distance education is well adapted to the use of new communication technologies, and brings to education many of the strengths and dangers of post-industrialism. The central focus of the study of distance education is the placing of the student at home or at work and the justification of the abandonment in this form of education of interpersonal, face-to-face communication, previously considered to be a cultural imperative for education in both east and west. This book explores the problems that distance education poses to the theorist, bringing together an international team of distance educators to address these issues for the first time in a systematic way. The team comprises theoreticians, administrators, experts in educational technology and adult education, experts in learning from video machines, from computers and other forms of technology. Contributions from Italy, and Scandinavia contrast with viewpoints provided by scholars from the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

Part I
Didactic underpinnings

1 Quality and access in distance education: Theoretical considerations

D. Randy Garrison

How shall we treat subject matter that is supplied by textbook and teacher so that it shall rank as material of reflective inquiry, not as ready-made intellectual pabulum to be accepted and swallowed just as if it were something bought at a shop?

J. Dewey, How We Think

There is a growing recognition of the worth of distance education as the knowledge base expands and is communicated to the larger educational community. Perhaps the primary reason is the recognition that distance education is, in the final analysis, education. The only real difference is that the majority of communication between teacher and student is mediated. However, this does not necessitate a diminution of the quality of the educational transaction or a reconceptualization of the educational process itself. With the emergence of a variety of affordable communications technologies those in conventional education find fewer philosophical and practical concerns with delivering education at a distance.

The debate around distance education has often been reduced to the issues of access and quality. From a practical perspective they are concerns that must be addressed and balanced when designing education to be delivered at a distance. On the other hand, they often reflect two philosophically divergent assumptions regarding the purpose and viability of distance education. One view assumes that distance education is an approach that is primarily defined in terms of access issues. The other view essentially assumes that in terms of quality standards distance education cannot simulate or approach conventional face-to-face education. Fortunately, it is becoming apparent that both these extreme views are not viable as the theoretical foundation and practical understanding of distance education develops.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore several concepts which weave through an emerging framework or paradigm of distance education. Specific issues around the concepts of quality and accessibility, dominant and emerging paradigms, the teaching–learning transaction, independence and interaction, and communication technologies will be discussed with the intent of informing a potential framework of theory and practice. It should be noted that the focus of the discussion is limited to learning in an adult and higher education context, although much of what is said could well apply to other learning contexts.

ACCESSIBILITY AND QUALITY

Historically, distance education has been preoccupied with access issues and this has been seen as the raison d’être of distance education. Concern for access is the driving motivation for many committed to distance education. Unfortunately, this missionary zeal can blind these educators to issues of quality and paradigmatic shifts that have occurred in how distance education is conceptualized and practised. As a result of new generations of communications technology, such as audio teleconferencing and computer-mediated communication, the image of the solitary and independent learner is changing. Also, innovative approaches adopted by mixed mode institutions that combine conventional and distance education approaches (to the point where it is difficult to label the approach as one or the other) may in effect reduce access marginally for advantages of quality.

The difficulty with assessing the quality of distance education is agreeing on a common meaning or set of objective criteria. Depending on the assumptions and values of the distance educator the meaning of quality will vary considerably. Those educators, working in autonomous distance education institutions with course design teams and taking advantage of the economics of scale, might judge quality from the perspective of the prepackaged print materials. Others in a more traditional mixed mode institution might point to the degree of mediated two-way communication (to simulate face-to-face dialogue) as a measure of quality. Such views in how we interpret quality in distance education are crucial to the direction of future development in the field, both from a theoretical and from a practical perspective.

In a study of the support of faculty for university distance education, Black (1992) states that faculty concerns about the quality of distance education were specifically related to the teacher–student transaction. She states, ‘The faculty interviewed believed that dialogue and academic discourse are necessary features of education that must be assured in distance education in order to achieve quality’ (Black 1992: 208). This supports the view of Garrison and Shale who argue ‘that improving the quality of the educational process through increased two-way communication is likely to have the most significant impact upon the effectiveness of learning’ (Garrison and Shale 1990: 128). While the design of print materials and other resources will influence the quality of learning, the overriding impact on the quality of an educational experience is the provision of sustained discourse between teacher and student.

Black concludes her study of faculty support by stating that accessibility and quality ‘should be given more prominence because it alone accounted for most of the variation in faculty support for distance education’ (Black 1992: 213). Positions with regard to educational accessibility and quality reflect educators’ basic beliefs and assumptions regarding distance education. As distance educators we must be prepared to clarify our assumptions regarding access and quality issues. The emphasis we place on the balance and how we define the issues will most likely reflect our beliefs and assumptions regarding distance education.

PARADIGMS

Distance education is still predominantly a private form of learning based upon prepackaged course materials produced to achieve economies of scale. The primary purpose of this industrialized model (Peters, cited in Keegan 1990) is to instruct as many students as possible regardless of time and location. Access is the driving motivation behind this design and delivery model. For this reason the model represents a particular set of assumptions regarding the theory and practice of distance education. It is the paradigm that, in fact, reflects the roots of distance education and is based upon accessibility issues.

More recently, some educators (Garrison 1989, Garrison and Shale 1990, Thompson 1990) have begun to focus on the quality aspects of the educational transaction itself. The assumption is that education is based upon two-way communication. The focus has turned towards concern for the quality of the educational transaction. Quality was reflected in the nature and frequency of communication between teacher and student as well as between student and student. While access remains an important consideration the two are not seen to be in conflict. In practice, reasonable choices can be made to find the appropriate balance of quality and accessibility. However, issues of quality and accessibility often reflect important but subtle differences in the design and delivery of distance education.

A crucial difference exists when prepackaged print materials are perceived as the primary source of information and learning as opposed to viewing print as a resource to stimulate reflection and discourse. This is not to say that both views cannot or should not be juxtaposed in practice. But if we are to prevent a polarization of distance education beliefs and practice, then we must become clear as to our assumptions. In short, distance educators must be aware of their ideals which ultimately shape practice and impact learners in significant ways.

When learning materials are prepackaged with prescribed objectives for the purpose of sustaining as much self-instruction as possible, then such an approach inherently reflects a behavioural orientation. The difficulty is that this approach is inappropriate to teach higher-level cognitive strategies based upon understanding of complex and ill-structured content areas (Winn 1990). Self-instructional materials are based upon confirmatory feedback intended to guide the student towards a prescribed learning goal. Higher-level cognitive goals, however, demand opportunities to negotiate learning objectives, encourage students to analyse critically course content for the purpose of constructing meaning, and then validate knowledge through discourse and action.

A cognitive/constructivist approach maximizes explanatory feedback which encourages the integration and construction of new knowledge structures–knowledge structures that are not uncritically assimilated in a superficial manner. The student assumes responsibility to construct meaning. Cognitive learning theory reflects understanding as a valued objective – not just as an observable and measurable behaviour. According to Winn, the challenge is to ‘monitor and adapt to unpredicted changes in student behavior and thinking as instruction proceeds’ (Winn 1990: 64). This can only be achieved via sustained two-way communication which is within the reach of most distance educators in the industrialized world.

Existing communications technology, such as audio teleconferencing and computer-mediated communication, makes it possible to address both access and quality concerns. The danger is to remain within the dominant paradigm of prescribed and prepackaged course materials and simply using two-way communications as optional ‘add-ons’. Salomon et al. argue that in terms of cognitive effect ‘No important impact can be expected when the same old activity is carried out with a technology that makes it a bit faster or easier; the activity itself has to change (Salomon et al. 1991: 8). Holmberg’s (1990) view of distance education is that things have not changed very much from traditional correspondence. It is suggested that the reason for this apparent lack of change is that the assumptions of the dominant paradigm (i.e., correspondence) reflect a particular view of the teaching–learning process where the educational ideal is a private independent learner. On the other hand, the cognitive/constructivist ideal of an interdependent teacher–learner is emerging as issues of quality (i.e., communication choice) become more prominent. The activity itself is changing with the adoption of new two-way communications technology and reliance on a collaborative mode. For distance educators the paradigmatic choice is between the ideals of assimilating information faster and more efficiently or challenging learners to construct meaning within a learning community.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

Distance educators have struggled to define satisfactorily their activities and the major reason for this is the ambiguity as to paradigmatic assumptions regarding the teaching–learning process. The problem is that distinguishing characteristics of distance education too often overemphasize the separation of teacher and student. Shale and Garrison argue that this ‘perpetuates an undue emphasis for the form that distance education takes and neglects the critical issue that distance education should be about “education” with the morphological constraints arising from distance being simply a physical and therefore methodological constraint’ (Shale and Garrison 1990: 25). Although conceptual ambiguities will be reduced considerably by regarding distance education as education at a distance, the challenge still remains to clarify what is meant by an educational transaction or learning experience.

The assumption here is that education represents a special kind of learning. In other words not all kinds of learning are educational. There is a very important distinction between learning that occurs in the natural societal context and that which occurs in a formal teaching situation. Education is a process most simply characterized as an interaction between teacher and student for the purpose of identifying, understanding, and confirming worthwhile knowledge. The transaction between teacher and student represents a mutually respectful relationship. Education is an exceedingly complex transaction for the purpose of transmitting and transforming societal knowledge. Societal values and beliefs are critically analysed and integrated into individual perspectives such that a new consciousness will emerge.

How distance educators view the educational process will to a large extent determine the meaning ascribed to concepts such as independence and interaction. From the perspective of the dominant paradigm independence is the ultimate goal. The ideal is to design a learning package that would maximize independence and concomitantly reduce the need for interaction. With the focus on independence distance education was able to make advances in terms of accessibility. Independence is seen as freedom to study when and where the student wishes. Interaction is largely defined in terms of how the student responds to the print package. Juler observes ‘that attempts in distance education to encourage independence on the part of students usually entail the educational materials assuming … a dominance which severely limits the nature and amount of interaction which may occur’ (Juler 1990: 26).

The apparent excessive emphasis on independence in distance education, and the resulting ambiguity of the concept, stimulated Garrison and Baynton (1987) to propose the more inclusive concept of control to account for the complexity of an educational transaction. Control, defined as the opportunity to influence educational decisions, goes beyond the rather simplistic view of independence as a freedom to study when and where the student wishes and without consideration for interaction (Daniel and Marquis 1979). Control is achieved in a complex and dynamic interaction between teacher, student and curricula at the macro level and between proficiency, support and independence at the micro level (see Figure 1.1). From an educational perspective control cannot be possessed by only the teacher or student but should be shared in an inherently collaborative process. The balance of control will depend on specific contextual concerns that are constantly changing and being evaluated.

Figure 1.1 Control and the educational transaction

Source: Adapted from Garrison and Baynton (1987).

Since the balance of control is constantly changing (due to what has been learned and to changing needs) maintaining this balance in an educational transaction is dependent upon sustained two-way communication. The reality is th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Didactic underpinnings
• Part II Academic underpinnings
• Part III Analytic underpinnings
• Part IV Philosophical underpinnings
• Part V Technological underpinnings
• Index