Will distance education ever reach parity with face to face education in the minds of the general public? While distance education has made significant strides in the last few years, it still has a long way to go. A recent survey by the Society of Human Resources managers found that one-third of organizations (34%) reported that job candidates who have obtained their degrees online were viewed as favorably as job applicants with traditional degrees (Society for Human Resource Management, 2010). So, what will it take to drive further acceptance distance education?
As Dr. Siemens noted in the video, acceptance of distance learning is driven by proliferation of online communication tools. In time, people’s comfort with these tools facilitates productive discussions. Thus, as technology evolves along with attitudes towards online communication, the convenience of distance learning becomes more compelling which in turn, results in larger population of learners with distance education experience. With a growing population of people with direct (distance learners) and indirect (friends and family of distance learners) with distance learning, acceptance of distance learning will continue to grow over time. Thus, greater societal familiarity with distance learning along with “students shopping for courses that meet their schedules and circumstances” (Howell, Williams, & Lindsay, 2003) will drive further acceptance of distance education.
However, there are also forces working against further acceptance of distance education. In general, human nature is resistant to change. Thus students and instructors will naturally be reluctant to experiment with a learning model that is different from what is tried and true. In addition, students may have bad experiences with distance education courses. Since it is impossible to insure that every student has positive experience with every course, there will undoubtedly be cases were students walk away from a course with a negative experience. This in turn, can make someone a life-long detractor of distance education.
Thus it is incumbent on me, as an instructional designer to be a proponent of distance education. There are a number of ways that I can do this. First is to be a good role model. As a product of the distance education environment, I want to demonstrate that my skills and expertise are at least on par with (if not superior to) other graduates with the same credentials. But more importantly, my goal as an instructional designer to create distance learning courses of the highest quality. I don’t want to create any future detractors of distance education.
More specifically, I want to help improve the state of the art in distance education. I feel I can do this in a number of ways. The first is to continue to be a lifelong learner and stay current with best practices. I plan to do this by keeping up with professional societies, publications and blogs in the area of distance education. In addition, I plan on sharing my knowledge and experience. This can be done in a number of ways. One way is to share content. Whenever I develop non-proprietary content, I would like to make that content available to others for use in a distributed learning environment. Another way is to share best practices. I would like to present my findings at conferences, write articles for publications or post to relevant blogs.
Looking ahead, I see that distance education will make higher education more accessible to a greater number of people. I look forward to be an integral part of it.
References:
Howell, S, Williams, P, & Lindsay, N. (2003). Thirty-two trends affecting distance education: an informed foundation for strategic planning. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 6(3). Retrieved from: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall63/howell63.html
Society for Human Resource Management. (2010, August 19). Hiring practices and attitudes: traditional vs. online degree credentials SHRM poll. Retrieved from http://www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Articles/Pages/HiringPracticesandAttitudes.aspx
