Today
it has been requested that I do some research and discuss best practices in
distance education (DE). In most cases,
I would do my research and only then begin writing my post in an effort to
ensure I put forward the most knowledgeable and professional version of myself.
Today,
however, I am going to do this a bit different.
As an introduction to this assignment, I was provided an excerpt from an
article concerning best practices in DE.
It discussed the journey that DE educational philosophy has taken; from
direct instruction, to constructivism, and now a burgeoning push toward
interaction.
As any
of you that have read my blog can attest, I am rather stuck on constructivism,
and I am not ready to move on from it.
So, in an effort to keep myself honest in front of my readers ( both of
you) I will go on record before having done the research and state that I am
not a big fan of required interaction in a distance learning environment.
Interaction itself is beneficial in
a distance environment; however the standard method of implementation for
instructors that want to require interaction is the “group project”. Problems surface in this format that do not exist
to the same extent in traditional group project formats. Variations in student motivation and
expectation are exacerbated by the increased feeling of anonymity caused by the
natural filter of the distance format and reduced feelings of team
responsibility caused by the short lengths of many distance classes.
With the cart firmly before the
horse, I will begin my research and my words from here forward will be more
informed.
The first article I run across is Distance
Education: pedagogy and best practices in the new millennium published in the 2003,
July through September edition of the International Journal of Leadership in
Education. This article has some
interesting things to say about over use of technology by distance educators,
and seems to agree with me that constructivist pedagogy is essential, but then
it goes on at some length to say how essential social presence and interaction
are to successful distance education (Miller, King, 2003). Well, that article
is old anyway. Best to move on.
Another slightly more recent
article seems to agree with the first. Gunawardena
et al., in their article New Model, New Strategies: Instructional design for
building online wisdom communities, insist that collaboration and interaction
are essential to the efficacy of any online program (2006). They also subscribe enthusiastically to
socio-constructivist philosophies and use these as a basis for the Wiscom
Design Model upon which they suggest creating distance education classes. This design model is built on the creation of
a learning community that collectively engages in the common pursuit of
educational goals (Gunawardena et al., 2006).
Wiscom sounds a little utopian, but
nice at the same time. The challenge, of
course, would be fostering such community.
As I mentioned earlier, the short asynchronous classes do not lend
themselves well to building community.
Wiscom has some answers to those difficulties. Mechanisms for mentoring and learner support are
central to their model. Pairing of
learners with mentors helps to integrate learners into the community, but takes
more staff than the average distance education format can commit.
Finally, we have an article by S.
Gulati in 2008 titled “Compulsory participation in online discussions: is this
constructivism or normalization of learning?”.
Gulati begins by stating that social
constructivism is, at it’s core, a method of acquiring knowledge which is
inherently social in nature, and therefore contains requirements for
interaction and collaboration. The study
did find that much of the actual online interaction in distance education
environments was actually off topic and that little of the interaction contributed
toward concept mastery.
The article then goes on to
articulate how compulsory participation contribution to group formats is a normalizing
influence, the need for which wrongly assumes that learners must express their
knowledge to an external, formal authority; an action antithetical to
constructivist philosophy ( Gulati, 2006).
If this is the case, strict adherence to constructivist philosophy would
make assessments difficult indeed. This
seems extreme to me, and even if assessment s run counter to a constructivist
philosophy, they are necessary from the educational institutions accountability
standpoint, and not necessarily from an educational standpoint.
Gutani
then goes on to describe an alternate constructivist role that is viable, but
not available within the current educational environment: that of the radical independent
constructivist. This person learns and
internalizes concepts more efficiently through observation and contemplation. Given the choice, the preferred choice of participation
in the online community would be that of a silent observer. Gutani asserts that this is akin to a
learning modality that is suppressed at the expense of learner autonomy
(2008).
I would
put forward that the radical independent Constructivist educational experience
is available to learners, even in our current distance educational
environment. If a learner desires to
observe, and learn with no responsibility to demonstrate the acquired knowledge,
that option is available if they have the money and ignore their grades. It is not until the learner desires to be
recognized by an institution or society as having acquired the knowledge that
learner autonomy is voluntarily sacrificed.
All in
all, I believe these articles generally agree with the stance that I expressed
originally. Interaction is important and
beneficial. Collaboration requires community. Enforced community has consequences.
David Bennett
Gulati,
S. (2008). Compulsory participation in online discussions: is this
constructivism or normalization of learning?. Innovations In Education &
Teaching International, 45(2), 183-192. doi:10.1080/14703290801950427
Gunawardena,
C., Ortegano‐Layne, L., Carabajal, K., Frechette, C., Lindemann, K., &
Jennings, B. (2006). New Model, New Strategies: Instructional design for
building online wisdom communities. Distance Education, 27(2), 217-232.
doi:10.1080/01587910600789613
Miller,
T. W., & King, F. B. (2003). Distance education: pedagogy and best
practices in the new millennium. International Journal Of Leadership In
Education, 6(3), 283-297.
