Defining Distance Learning

Distance learning took a while to enter my life.  I attended a traditional K-12 private school, and went on to attend a four-year traditional college.  The college was distant from my home in Seattle – all the way to Iowa – but involved face-to-face classroom and lab environments.  For my first couple of employers, I was asked to provide on the job training to several coworkers.  This education was all provided in face-to-face environments.  Any certification courses that I attended were completed at a specific location; again, face-to-face.

When I was employed in a larger healthcare organization (not until early 2000), I completed online modules for compliance training and in 2008 became instrumental in administering the learning management system.  Somehow, I didn’t associate these courses with distance learning as they were provided at a specific location, plus, the concept of distance learning was not in my vocabulary.

In the video presentation, Distance Education:  The New Generation, Simonson mentions correspondence study and European open universities as part of the history of distance learning (Laureate).  Although I did not experience either of these environments, the value of these trends and services is great in the evolution resulting in today’s online learning advances.

Currently, I am the administrator of the learning management system at a large healthcare organization.  I appreciate the accuracy of the education that can be delivered in this system as well as the convenience that it is instantly available once it is in the system (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008, p. 70).

What I have come to conclude is that distance learning is an environment of collaborative and interactive learning among instructor, students and technology that can be accessed at any time from anywhere. 

I would like to share a quote that speaks to the benefit of distance education:  “Distance education provides the opportunity to widen intellectual horizons, as well as the chance to improve and update professional knowledge.  Further, it stresses individuality of learning and flexibility in both the time and place of study.”  (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012, p. 39).  My challenge is and continues to be to deliver not just information, but learning that emphasizes knowledge building and problem solving skills in the learners (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008, p. 74).

References: 

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5), 63–6 7.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer) (n.d. b). “Distance Education: The Next Generation.” [Multimedia program].

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.