Distance Education Theory and Practice: Introduction

Learning Objectives

At the end of this introductory chapter, you will be able to:

Define an Open Educational Resource.
Describe the rapid pace of distance education theory and practice.
Identify the various activities and resources available within Distance Educational Theory and Practice.

Introduction

This website is an Open Educational Resource (OER) for the educational technology community in the form of interactive eBook built using the WordPress content management system. The resource includes a wide-array of pedagogical features, including things like learning objectives, graphics, easy-to-read descriptions, practice assessments, discussion questions, individual activities, tables of contents, and a glossary of terms. The materials were developed using contemporary resources from the larger educational technology community, including books, journal articles, and reliable websites. In developing this resource, we did not subscribe to the traditional notion of an eBook being designed and developed to be read on dedicated e-reader devices. Instead, we developed an eBook to be read on general computing devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, or Personal Computers) with interactive features beyond the mere text. It is our hope that this resource will be valuable to novice instructional designers seeking guidance on the field.

Distance Education in the 21st Century

The field of distance education has its origins in the practice of correspondence courses facilitated by mail systems during the industrial revolution. Since the 1800s, distance education has evolved with both the theories of teaching and learning and the rapid pace of technological change. Today, distance education can encompass almost any form of technology-mediated teaching and learning situations including terms like e-learning, distributed learning, online learning, web-based instruction, and more. These related ideas have resulted in several innovations in the past century ranging from Learning Management Systems to Massive Open Online Courses, which can accommodate thousands of learners in a single course.

Today, individuals can earn graduate degrees focusing on the body of knowledge surrounding the theory and practice of distance education. Further, professional careers (e.g., instructional designers, virtual teachers, and other distance education professionals) have emerged to support this form of education in virtually every context like K-12 education, higher education, corporate education, and even military education. Distance Education Theory and Practice is designed for those individuals seeking relevant and useful information about the field.

Chapter Organization and Resources

Each chapter in Distance Educational Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive overview of the method and processes surrounding contemporary distance education. Further, each chapter provides clear learning objectives, easy to read content with relevant graphics and tables, individual assignments, discussion questions, interactive end-of-chapter quizzes, and easy to navigate text. The book is organized into five chapters:

Definition and History of Distance Education: We start the eBook with an overview of the definition of distance education and its rich history and technology. The chapter also discusses some of the current perceived benefits and overall criticisms of distance education. With this working knowledge, you will be prepared to journey through the remaining chapters on distance education with a clear definition and historical perspective in mind.
Theoretical Frameworks in Distance Education: Implementation and practice is usually informed by theoretical assumptions and explanations of social phenomenon. Distance education particularly is built upon theories regarding learning facilitation and effective communication. Chapter 2 will discuss the philosophical underpinnings and theoretical foundations that influence the implementation of distance education. It will cover initial philosophical and psychological foundations, such as empiricism, behaviorism, and constructivism. Then, it will evaluate the influence of more contemporary theoretical foundations, like systems theory and communication theory, on instructional practices as they relate to distance education platforms.
Research Methods in Distance Education: The research for the development of distance education is extensive. This chapter provides an overview of common arguments in distance education from previous meta-analysis studies. As well as, introduces research methodologies that resulted in significant findings in distance education. It includes major findings and criticisms in distance education research. The chapter offers an understanding of the criteria and future direction of distance education.
Delivery Methods in Distance Education: A brief review of the history of delivery methods in distance education is discussed. The chapter discusses the delivery methods of distance education such as synchronous and asynchronous collaborative tools. The authors mention different authoring tools and types of delivery methods. There is also a comparison and selection of delivery methods and its advances. The chapter will close with a discussion on the future of delivery methods in distance education.
Facilitation and Quality in Distance Education: Instructors facilitate learning to provide the optimal learning outcomes for learners. In Chapter 5 on Distance Education Facilitation and Quality, you will be provided with information on performance standards, best practices and quality assurance in relation to distance education that enhance learning. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of teaching presence and talks about how teaching presence as in a learning community of instructors and students, could be achieved in distance education environment. At the end of the chapter, you will have a better understanding of how to create a curriculum for distance education courses that takes into consideration the role of instructors, learning community, and quality assurance.

eBook Design and Development Process

This eBook was created as part of the Fall 2016 Advanced Instructional Design Course at the University of Florida. This was the second eBook developed using an emerging set of procedures for the design and development of the resource. Students in the class participated in the writing of each of the chapters in teams of two to four, along with the instructional activities found at the end of each chapter. Attention was placed on crafting learning objectives, aligning content to those objectives, and designing assessment activities to measure those learning objectives.

The student biographies can be found on the Author Credits page. Additionally, each chapter underwent two rounds of a peer-review process intended to improve the clarity and alignment of the writing. After all the materials were developed by the students, the instructor created a site to host the eBook using a WordPress instance. All contributors were students in the Educational Technology program at the University of Florida.

Educational and Technological Affordances

Distance Educational Theory and Practice includes a number of educational and technological affordances designed and developed to assist the learners in comprehending the subject matter with a minimal extraneous cognitive load. The feature of this ebook was developed by integrating plug-ins into the WordPress environment to make the ebook interactive and with a clean look-and-feel. The affordances of this environment include the following components:

Learning Objectives: Providing learners with learning objectives can be an effective pre-instructional strategy to prepare the learner for the upcoming materials to be learned (Morrison, Ross, Kemp, & Kalman, 2010). The learning objective in this ebook carefully traces the selected content and assessment activities embedded within the environment.

End-of-Chapter Practice Assessments: The end of chapter practice assessments provide learners the opportunity to review their understanding of the materials with immediate feedback. Student scores on the various quizzes are recorded in the database, overall normed scored are provided for each assessment activity. The questions are randomly presented but include response correctness as visual feedback on the interactive assessments.

Open-Ended Discussion Questions: Social learning theories encourage the interaction and sharing of knowledge among learners on a topic of interest. Distance Education Theory and Practice includes a discussion questions for learners to engage with at the end of each chapter.

Individual Assignments: Individual assignments enable learners to explore topics in greater depth in which they might be interested in or a topic a teacher wishes to cover in greater depth. Further, individual assignments can also promote the development of independence and the culmination of knowledge and skills, such as instructional design skills. The individual assignments are designed to be completed individually by students to promote their self-regulation and professional development.

Definition of Terms: Each chapter provides the learners with a set of active tooltips to the definition of terms that are presented in the chapter. This enables the learners to review the key terminology presented in the text and is an active review strategy for recall and comprehension. The tooltip texts also serve as scaffolds for supporting the learners’ efforts in building mental models about instructional design. There are over 100 unique terms defined in this resource.

Glossary of Terms: Textbooks can be overwhelming in the number of words and ideas that are presented. This ebook along presents more than 100 new terms for the reader. Luckily, a common practice is to provide a glossary of terms (i.e. index) at the end of the text to assist the readers in finding relevant information. The eBook provides a rich glossary of terms with active hyperlinks to relevant sections of the eBook and the definitions of each term.

Chapter Table of Contents: The table of contents is really an expectation of any textbook for learning. We provide an outline of each chapter with active hyperlinks to each section of the ebook, allowing the learner to take multiple pathways to the learning material. This affords the learners control over the learning environment. Each entry in the menus and tables are active links to different pages or different sections within a page using a scrolling feature.

Cueing On-Screen Text: Cueing written text is an effective way to gain the learners attention and draw their attention to key ideas presented using on-screen text. The use of italics, bold, and headings can provide learners better structure and attention-getting details to improve learning outcomes. The cues are an easy way to potentially influence the recall of the relevant information. These techniques are used with care to not confuse or overwhelm the readers.

Static Pictures and Graphics: Pictures can serve as decorational, representational, organizational, and transformational. While decorational images serve no purpose and can actually hinder the learning process, representational, organizational, and transformational images have been found to have moderate effects on learning outcomes. Distance Educational Theory and Practice uses a combination of relevant representational, organizational, and transformational pictures and graphics to illustrate complex materials for the learners. This is really the application of the multimedia learning principle.

Search Utility: One clear advantage of using a digital format to implement a technology-rich ebook is that the information is already in digital form, thus enabling the learners to search across the eBook for relevant information they need on demand using keywords and phrases. This feature enables learners to access the information they need without having to scan the text within various chapters of the ebook needlessly.

Clean Printing: A required feature of any ebook should be the inclusion of a print-ready functionality for each chapter in the text. Teachers or students may have a reason to print the materials for learning offline. Our ebook has a print-friendly function for the teachers and learners to print the materials to a PDF file for printing, or directly to a printer on the network.

Text-To-Speech: Distance Educational Theory and Practice includes functionality for reading the ebook contents aloud in an English-speaking, woman’s voice. This feature is especially helpful to individuals with visual impairments or potentially other conditions like Dyslexia. With a click of a button, you can listen to the contents of the ebook without frustration.

Language Translation Service: Distance Educational Theory and Practice is automatically connected to the Google Translate service, which enables the learner to translate the page into over 100 different languages. This service is as simple as clicking a button or selecting a drop-down.

The evolution and transformation of the notion of an ebook are catalyzed by the many capabilities of modern-day Content Management Systems like WordPress. This small ebook is an effort to demonstrate a proof of concept that quality educational resources can be developed for a multitude of learners and applications without costing a significant financial burden. Please feel free to contact us if you have any feedback about the ebook.