Where we are, and where we’re going, in distance education

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic changed the landscape of learning forever. If necessity is the mother of invention, the pandemic mitigation efforts and stay-at-home orders could be described as the grandmother of remote learning. Whether apart in distance, time, or both, the interactions between teacher and student – regardless of age or academic level – will never be the same. That’s not to say that the changes were universally accepted or continue today, especially in K-12 education in the United States. Political influences have pulled teachers and students back into the classrooms, with only the unfortunate elimination of the regionally specific snow day as a lingering result. Cyber charter schools and home school programs embraced the online classroom long before the pandemic, of course, and are gaining acceptance – again, for possibly more politically motivated reasons than any discussion of methodology and pedagogy.

(I do miss snow days, don’t you? If you’re not familiar, back “in my day” schools would close when it was not safe to run the buses, and students had the luxury of sleeping in, having questionably healthy choices for breakfast, then bundling up to go and play in the snow only to come back to hot chocolate and soup. I’m sure our parents were dismayed over childcare struggles, but for a northern American kid in the 80’s, it was akin to a frosty heaven!)

But I digress. Today’s distance learning, while pervasive, still carries concerns regarding quality and access. Students have richer levels of engagement with in-class learning, and those without access to reliable internet, hardware, and software are left out of this discussion through what are sometimes systemic inequities (2024 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition, 2024). Each student has preferences in how they learn, and not all students do well in an online environment, while others have the opposite experience. So, with all of that said, where do we go from here with distance learning?

I imagine there will be more distance learning opportunities for postsecondary and adult education in the near future. Just as remote work has opened flexibilities for workers, remote education allows flexibility for parents and career professionals to expand learning beyond the classroom (Rossman, 2000). Undergraduates can more easily balance athletic, occupational, and social interactions when learning can adapt to their schedule, making them more engaged and successful (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). This learner-focused approach extends to the content itself as well. Increased learner analysis, perhaps completed by AI, can allow designers to more easily create personalized and tailor-made learning opportunities in answer to the client or institutional needs. Access to educational content should never be limited by geography or socioeconomic status, regardless of nationality. Recent initiatives at the national level have expanded broadband internet access, and this educator hopes that the “triple helix” of educational institutions, businesses, and governmental agencies that Dr. Siemens described continue to align with that increased access (Walden, n.d.)

Further down the road, I imagine that virtual and augmented reality will take a more prominent role in creating engaging content and allowing more accessibility for students with disabilities. This technology could also create more authentic assessments, which are difficult to manage for specific topics in fully remote environments. While performance assessments allow for easier grading and let an instructor see if the student can repeat facts, an authentic assessment shows the student can successfully use the concepts taught in real-world applications, which is valuable, especially in workplace learning. Ideally, distance education will continue its global expansion and rising acceptance as observable results bear out its academic rigor, and the lack of affordable access is mitigated by decreased costs or governmental intervention (The Digital Divide, 2024).

So, how do we keep up and increase the adoption and acceptance of this brave new world we find ourselves in? We instructional designers must become advocates for the very thing we create. The first step is to design engaging, learner-centric content that follows comprehensive academic standards (Morrison et al., 2019). That content must be delivered hand in hand with regular, authentic, and effective communication between instructions, designers, students, and stakeholders, and our successes should be shouted from the mountaintops! We must also advocate for our students as much as we are able. Those with learning differences, disabilities, or barriers to accessing quality education depend on us, their teachers, to be their voice and guide as shifting political winds take diversity and inclusion from the center to the side and back again (Seale et al., 2021).

We owe it to our communities of students to stay up to date with research and developments in the fields of study most aligned with our work. We owe it to our clients and stakeholders to keep up with new technology and to become experts in its use. We owe it to ourselves to seek valuable feedback in all we do, whether for a quick recorded lecture or a fully online curriculum spanning several courses. We owe it to our fellow educators to provide the same caliber of feedback and collaboration when requested. Finally, we owe it to the global community of learners and the basic concept of education to continue advocating for lifelong learning and professional development. The day we learn nothing is the day we die, and quality education relies on quality instructors.

References:

2024 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition. (2024, May 13). EDUCAUSE Library. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2024/5/2024-educause-horizon-report-teaching-and-learning-edition

Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. AAHE Bulletin. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed282491

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. J., Morrison, J. R., & Kalman, H. K. (2019). Designing effective instruction. John Wiley & Sons.

Rossman, M. H. (2000). Andragogy and Distance Education: Together in the New Millennium. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 14(1), 4–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/nha3.10105

Seale, J., Colwell, C., Coughlan, T., Heiman, T., Kaspi-Tsahor, D., & Olenik-Shemesh, D. (2021). ‘Dreaming in colour’: Disabled higher education students’ perspectives on improving design practices that would enable them to benefit from their use of technologies. Education and Information Technologies, 26(2), 1687–1719. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10329-7

The Digital Divide. (2024, May 29). https://pew.org/3UMUd25

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (n.d.).