Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

George Siemens has certainly made us think about distance learning and how we can take advantage of technologies to enhance our online courses. I agree that distance education is much different from face-to-face courses and can expand a person’s perception of the world due to the participation of those not just in the U.S. but globally in the courses. I obtained my MBA online and continued with the online format because of the diversity that I experience. Had I attended classes at a college in Cleveland, Ohio, I would have been exposed to the same nationalities and type of people I interact with on a daily basis. Having students from around the world share their experiences and knowledge of what is happening in their country is enlightening and broadens my education.

The element that I would like to expand on from George Siemen’s talk is collaborative interaction. Blogs and Wikis are two popular tools available online for students to interact outside of the Course Management System. Siemens (2009) taught us that blogs are not just a tool for social networking, they are a way for students to create their own knowledge. This is an important concept in online learning because of the lack of personal interaction between the student and teacher and the student with other students. “Interactivity is valuable. Finding the best way to interact means understanding the conditions and circumstances of your students and their environment” (Nash, 2010). 

Susan Nash has a blog that identifies the most recent technologies and how they are used in the classroom. I agree with utilizing the tools that students use for the class, however, I would not like to see education content turned into an iPhone application. Recently, I had a student who was enrolled in my online course and tried to use her iPhone for the course. Mobile technologies are great tools to use with a course, however, these small devices just don’t meet the needs for the entire course.

Collaborative interaction in the online environment has evolved tremendously. This is evident by the number of socially interactive tools available. “Expression and creativity presuppose a community or audience, and so social creativity probably produces the greatest benefits, whether they be open source software contribution sites, artistic sites like Deviant Art or Flickr, blogging and discussion sites, or repositories like YouTube or SlideShare” (Downes, 2010). Stephen Downes has taught and designed in the distance education environment at various colleges in Canada. He is a colleague of George Siemens and supports his theories of connectivism and collaborative learning in the online classroom. Siemens (2005) indicated that knowledge is not just presented and known by the learner, it is constructed. Students can utilize blogs, wikis, and social networking sites to create their own knowledge and share it with others. 

There is also the idea presented in connectivism that too much information exists for one person to absorb in a lifetime, so it is up to that person to choose what information they want to use now, what information they want to retrieve later and what information they do not want.

“Decision-making is learning. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision” (Siemens, 2006, p. 31).

It is the student’s responsibility to acquire what is relevant and discard what is not. George Siemens and Stephen Downes have presented a good argument in defense of connectivisim and I agree with their presentation of facts. 

Downes, S. (2010). Responses to Questions on Technology and Schools. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/post/53264.

Nash, S. (Sept. 22, 2010). Mobile Learning: Is It Doing What It’s Supposed To? Retrieved from http://elearnqueen.blogspot.com/

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for a digital age. International Journal of Instruction Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved September 15, 2010 from http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm.

Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing knowledge. Lexington, KY: Lulu.com.

Distance Learning and the Next Generation

We have only begun to understand e-learning and how it impacts learners, teachers, and society. With many existing courses, developers were not familiar with the differences between classroom and online learning. Many instructors were told to create the courses, so they took their made for the classroom curriculum and posted it on the Internet. As we have come to learn, this does not work. In fact, this is exactly what happened where I work. I am full-time at Tiffin University. In this capacity, I am required to continually develop my online courses. When I first looked at the course (I just began this position last month) I found that they were quickly thrown together with not thought about how students learn, how e-learning is different, and what type of resources are out there to make the course more learner-centered.


As I begin to understand the make-up of the online Associates Degree program that I teach in, I find that the faculty were not completely on board with this whole idea. "If distance education is to become "main-stream" with continued productivity, we need to begin to clearly address e-learning issues such as course development, salary, workload, intellectual property rights, and promotion and tenure)" Moller, Foshay, and Huett, 2008, p. 69). In our case, this still has not occurred. In fact, there are arguments about intellectual property rights that linger on, so faculty have chosen not to post their information on the TU portal but instead email the information so that TU cannot say that it is theirs. Faculty believe that if they leave the university, they should be able to take their developed course information with them, however, TU does not.

The development of courses needs to continue. Even John Dewey told us

 “Since the curriculum is always getting loaded down with purely inherited traditional matter and with subjects which represent mainly the energy of some influential person or group of persons in behalf of something dear to them, it requires constant inspection, criticism, and revision to make sure it is accomplishing its purpose” (Dewey, 2009, 86). 

So it is important that we stay on top of e-learning and continually update the information and add new technological features to the course.

Dewey, J. (2009). Democracy and education: Complete and unabridged. USA: Feather Trail Press.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, May/June). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the Web (Part 1: Training and Development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70–75. Use the Academic Search Premier database, and search using the article's title.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, July/August). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the Web (Part 2: Higher Education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66–70. Use the Academic Search Premier database, and search using the article's title.

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W. & Coleman, C. (2008, September/October). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the Web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5), 63–67.Use the Academic Search Premier database, and search using the article's title.