The New Understanding Of Distance Education

The first time I thought I wanted to enroll in a program that i will do in as distance education. One thing that quickly crossed my mind was that I was going start a learning process where a student is issued with all the material to study and then make all the effort on their own. I was viewing myself working tireless trying to understand all without much assistance from the instructor then sit for the final. This was mainly because I was more familiar to the traditional, face to face classroom environment where there is real time communication between the instructor and student, but as distance I was not going to have that. It was going to be different with the traditional with the instructor serving as a leader, responsible for the class goals, objectives and methods of evaluation, giving handouts and open class discussions.

When I started this course, a lot started to make sense. I had initially thought that distance learning was a new thing people were still trying to experiment to see if it works, yet it was not. Dr Simonson puts it well, he said “isn’t it interesting that distance education has been around for long time.” this made me acknowledge how effective distance education can be since it is not a new kid on the block.

Dr Simonson defines distance education as, “formal education that is instructionally based, where the learning group, the teacher, the students, and the resources, possibly are separated not only by geography, but sometimes by time, sometimes intellect, and where technologies are used to link the resources, the teacher and the learner.” This definition encompasses the who, what, when, where why and how of distance education. He even defines it clearly by saying that it” includes physical separation of teachers and students during instruction”

The way I envision distance education is the emergence of e-learning that allows for anytime anywhere instructions, and it is made available in any format. In this future the instructional designer will be at the center of it all, steering the organizations to accept new instructional approaches, this will very necessary due to the fact that learners will be in a position to choose the courses they want to take. This will lead people to see some additions of new students to the informal learning.

The greatest thing among all is the fact that classrooms will continue to adopt so as to accommodate new learning environment because this is necessary for the benefit of the future learning environment, putting the learners success first.

Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7th ed.) Information Age Publishing. 

Simonson, M. and Berg, . Gary A. (2016, November 7). distance learning. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/distance-learning

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (n.d.). Distance education: The next generation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu