Introduction
Distance learning has grown exponentially within the past ten years. The presence of a wide variety of online programs as well as the tremendous number of schools and organization that offer distance education has provided excellent educational opportunities to many students as well as working professionals to study further. These opportunities will open more chances for career changes and development as compared to past generations. This course has helped me have an insight into the perceptions of distance learning and developed my skills in course design and instructional delivery.
Perceptions of Distance Learning
The easy access, flexibility and diversity of distance learning will make it a more popular choice for people who are seeking a higher education. They will be able to meet their educational needs as well as learn anywhere, anytime and in a practical way with a lower cost. Currently, some people still have the perception that distance education is less rigorous, less demanding, with less value than traditional face-to-face education, and with less or no accreditation. I believe the future will see a change in these perceptions as distance learning will be more familiar and the society begins to realize the quality, value, and depth that many distance education courses and programs can provide. I also expect the future to see an end to many of the “degree mills” as a result of the wide spread of high quality, valuable, and accredited online education programs.
Instructional Designer Role
As distance education continues to evolve and starts to dominate, it will rely more and more on the content quality, higher levels of students’ interaction and the use of the latest technology to deliver the learning materials. It is the role of the instructional designer to make that happen. He should know how to use the rapidly evolving technology tools in order to effectively deliver the perfect message to the learners. Peters (2002) has suggested that “the swift, unforeseen, unexpected and unbelievable achievement of information and communication technologies will require the design of new formats of learning and teaching and will cause powerful and far-reaching structural changes of the learning-teaching process” (Simonson et al, 2009). Accordingly, I believe the instructional designers will be a major proponent for improving positive societal perceptions of distance learning if they managed to continuously use the learning theories, available experimental data, and latest suitable technology tools to design such new formats of meaningful, interactive and high quality learning programs.
To be a positive force for continuous improvement in the field of distance learning, I will need, as an instructional designer, to continuously develop my knowledge, be creative, be innovative, use the latest technology tools to visualize and think of every possible way to make the subjects interesting to the learners.
References:
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Converting to a Distance Learning Format
Course Scenario: A training manager has been frustrated with the quality of communication among trainees in his face-to-face training sessions and wants to try something new. With his supervisor’s permission, the trainer plans to convert all current training modules to a blended learning format which would provide trainees and trainers the opportunity to interact with each other and learn the material in both face-to-face and online environments.
The trainer’s idea looks perfect as blended or hybrid approaches are probably the most widespread applications of distance education (Daffron & Webster, 2006; Epstein, 2006). This approach was also described as the “best of both worlds” by Schlosser and Burmeister (1999), where the course would have varying percentages of face-to-face and distance-delivered learning experiences.
I believe, the most common model to use for planning and designing the course instructions will be ADDIE which moves through the phases of development -- Analyze, Develop, Design, Implement and Evaluation with evaluation milestones marking the end of each phase.
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Please follow the link to read the complete paper.
https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/A7AbdelazizA.pdf?w=1a91c781
The trainer’s idea looks perfect as blended or hybrid approaches are probably the most widespread applications of distance education (Daffron & Webster, 2006; Epstein, 2006). This approach was also described as the “best of both worlds” by Schlosser and Burmeister (1999), where the course would have varying percentages of face-to-face and distance-delivered learning experiences.
I believe, the most common model to use for planning and designing the course instructions will be ADDIE which moves through the phases of development -- Analyze, Develop, Design, Implement and Evaluation with evaluation milestones marking the end of each phase.
Please follow the link to read the complete paper.
https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/A7AbdelazizA.pdf?w=1a91c781
Saturday, June 4, 2011
The Impact of Open Source
MIT OpenCourseWare
I have chosen to evaluate one course from the MIT OpenCourseWare. It is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT however:
• OCW is not an MIT education
• OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
• OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
• Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.
For more information, please use this link http://ocw.mit.edu/about/ to access the website page about MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW).
7.014 Introductory Biology is the course I have selected to evaluate. It is a recorded face-to-face course that had been taught at the MIT campus in the semester of Spring 2005. The course is carefully pre-planned and very well designed for a traditional class. However it can be used as a quality distance learning course along with the availability of online study groups that will add a sort of apparent asynchronous discussion feature to the course, but there will be no rules or instructors to organize such discussions.
As per the website orientation video, (getting started with OCW, http://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-started-with-ocw/ ), the course materials are posted for MIT students in order to plan their workload or review the concepts they have learned in pervious semesters, and also it is available for the independent learners in order to enhance their skills or tackle on the subjects using different lecture resources.
Anyone can access the course for free without registration and he / she can subscribe to RSS feed in order to get notifications of any course updates.
Course Design and Activities
The course structure is very well organized with a variety of tools including syllabus, calendar, recitation, reading, assignments, exams, study materials, video lectures and unit questions, however all the tools were designed for a traditional class. For example, the syllabus is general and very brief, it does not have much information about the course weekly tasks as in reality the “Syllabus should be equal to the instructional plan” as Dr. George Piskurich mentioned in Laureate video program “Planning and Designing online Course”.
In order to plan for instruction at distance, Simonson et. al., (2009) stated that “we have to keep in mind that courses previously taught in traditional classrooms may need to be retooled. The focus of the instructions should shift to visual presentations, engaged learners, and careful timing of presentations of information”. However, the only retooling I have noticed is adding the videos for a recorded FTF lectures without any modifications to account for teaching the class online.
It is also clear that the course designer implemented different activities that allow for student group work however that was only executed during the FTF class. For distance learners, these activities end-up as posted assignments without a having a chance for instructor lead organized group work.
Reference:
Piskurich, G., & Chauser, J. (n.d.). Planning and designing online courses. Video. Produced by Laureate Education, Inc.
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
I have chosen to evaluate one course from the MIT OpenCourseWare. It is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT however:
• OCW is not an MIT education
• OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
• OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
• Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.
For more information, please use this link http://ocw.mit.edu/about/ to access the website page about MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW).
7.014 Introductory Biology is the course I have selected to evaluate. It is a recorded face-to-face course that had been taught at the MIT campus in the semester of Spring 2005. The course is carefully pre-planned and very well designed for a traditional class. However it can be used as a quality distance learning course along with the availability of online study groups that will add a sort of apparent asynchronous discussion feature to the course, but there will be no rules or instructors to organize such discussions.
As per the website orientation video, (getting started with OCW, http://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-started-with-ocw/ ), the course materials are posted for MIT students in order to plan their workload or review the concepts they have learned in pervious semesters, and also it is available for the independent learners in order to enhance their skills or tackle on the subjects using different lecture resources.
Anyone can access the course for free without registration and he / she can subscribe to RSS feed in order to get notifications of any course updates.
Course Design and Activities
The course structure is very well organized with a variety of tools including syllabus, calendar, recitation, reading, assignments, exams, study materials, video lectures and unit questions, however all the tools were designed for a traditional class. For example, the syllabus is general and very brief, it does not have much information about the course weekly tasks as in reality the “Syllabus should be equal to the instructional plan” as Dr. George Piskurich mentioned in Laureate video program “Planning and Designing online Course”.
In order to plan for instruction at distance, Simonson et. al., (2009) stated that “we have to keep in mind that courses previously taught in traditional classrooms may need to be retooled. The focus of the instructions should shift to visual presentations, engaged learners, and careful timing of presentations of information”. However, the only retooling I have noticed is adding the videos for a recorded FTF lectures without any modifications to account for teaching the class online.
It is also clear that the course designer implemented different activities that allow for student group work however that was only executed during the FTF class. For distance learners, these activities end-up as posted assignments without a having a chance for instructor lead organized group work.
Reference:
Piskurich, G., & Chauser, J. (n.d.). Planning and designing online courses. Video. Produced by Laureate Education, Inc.
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Asynchronous Distance Learning Technologies
In an effort to improve its poor safety record, a biodiesel manufacturing plant needs a series of safety training modules. These stand-alone modules must illustrate best practices on how to safely operate the many pieces of heavy machinery on the plant floor. The modules should involve step-by-step processes and the method of delivery needs to be available to all shifts at the plant. As well, the shift supervisors want to be sure the employees are engaged and can demonstrate their learning from the modules.
The best solution for this case is the Asynchronous learning, it is a student – centered teaching method that uses the online learning resource to facilitate information sharing between networks of people at anytime and anyplace (Wikipedia).
As instructional designer, in order to build these stand-alone modules, I would use the linear programmed instructions technique, which requires all content to be organized into concepts that are presented in blocks / modules. The students review the content which involves a step-by-step processes, then take a self-test, and if successful move to the next block of information. This happens sequentially until all the modules are completed. The ID have to determine the order of concepts / modules based on the sequence of the processes and the students should move in the same order (Simonson et. al., 2009), pp.119.
To build the learning materials, I would use narrated PowerPoint presentations that include text, processes flow charts, costumed graphics, snap shot pictures, videos and flash animations. A course management system such as Moodle or any other available CMS should be used to host and administer the use of the presentation contents, students assessment, required reading and assignments, some sort of communication and reporting such as e-mail and blogs, course and system statistics and course management components such enrollments, course calendar and coursework grading.
My first example comes from New York State Department of Health to show how the integrations of PowerPoint, flash animation, custom graphics, special video effects, and professionally produced video and narration in a professional way have resulted a great online modules for the National Quality Center, please check the presentation from: http://www.nqcqualityacademy.org/tutorial1/
The following link accesses a website that gives a great example of how the use of flash animation technology and animated presentations can produce highly interactive distance learning modules:
http://www.clearlytrained.com/portfolio/eLearning_Samples_of_Work.htm
References:
Clearlytrained website: http://www.clearlytrained.com/
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and Learning at a Distance Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed). Boston, MA; Pearson.
WebWorld Technologies website : http://www.webworldtechnologies.com/distance-learning-systems
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_learning
The best solution for this case is the Asynchronous learning, it is a student – centered teaching method that uses the online learning resource to facilitate information sharing between networks of people at anytime and anyplace (Wikipedia).
As instructional designer, in order to build these stand-alone modules, I would use the linear programmed instructions technique, which requires all content to be organized into concepts that are presented in blocks / modules. The students review the content which involves a step-by-step processes, then take a self-test, and if successful move to the next block of information. This happens sequentially until all the modules are completed. The ID have to determine the order of concepts / modules based on the sequence of the processes and the students should move in the same order (Simonson et. al., 2009), pp.119.
To build the learning materials, I would use narrated PowerPoint presentations that include text, processes flow charts, costumed graphics, snap shot pictures, videos and flash animations. A course management system such as Moodle or any other available CMS should be used to host and administer the use of the presentation contents, students assessment, required reading and assignments, some sort of communication and reporting such as e-mail and blogs, course and system statistics and course management components such enrollments, course calendar and coursework grading.
My first example comes from New York State Department of Health to show how the integrations of PowerPoint, flash animation, custom graphics, special video effects, and professionally produced video and narration in a professional way have resulted a great online modules for the National Quality Center, please check the presentation from: http://www.nqcqualityacademy.org/tutorial1/
The following link accesses a website that gives a great example of how the use of flash animation technology and animated presentations can produce highly interactive distance learning modules:
http://www.clearlytrained.com/portfolio/eLearning_Samples_of_Work.htm
References:
Clearlytrained website: http://www.clearlytrained.com/
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and Learning at a Distance Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed). Boston, MA; Pearson.
WebWorld Technologies website : http://www.webworldtechnologies.com/distance-learning-systems
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_learning
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The Evolution of Distance Learning
Before starting this course, my personal definition for distance learning was simply is the learning process when learners are physically separated from the teachers or the source of the instructions. Learners mostly work on individual basis, and learning materials would be sent to the learner in different forms either text, audio, video, or online instructions. I always had the impression that final assessment still has to be in the same format of traditional class assessment however that changes when I have experienced the online assessments.
From this week’s resources I have learned that four major components are required in order to define distance education: 1- It should be institutionally based. 2- Physical separation between the teacher and student, separation could be in both terms of geographic and time. 3- Interactive telecommunications and interaction could be synchronous or asynchronous. 4- Connecting learners, resources and instructors. (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009).
I believe that the most feasible definition for distance education is the one given by Simonson, 2003 as “instruction-based, formal education where the learning group is separated, and where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources and instructors”. Based on this definition, distance education can be simply described as “the process of creating and delivering an access to learning when the source of learning materials and the learners are separated by distance and time or by both of them”.
The definition of distance learning is always changing with the change of the technology used for implementing and managing the learning process. Other different terms could be used based on using locations and the actual use and requirements of distance education such as “ virtual schools” which refer to using distance education in schools and in my company for example we use the term Learning Management System or “ILearn” .
Distance learning programs have grown and multiplied incredibly over the past ten years, I believe in the future, distance learning will continue to evolve at the same pace of developing new technologies that will help in facilitating the delivery of learning materials. I expect it to gain more ground in the schools and universities as well as other institutes with more classes are taught online either by itself or blended with traditional classes. I also believe that the future developments will be even faster in rates than the development rates over the last ten years as a result of the growing population of the technologically educated young instructional designers / instructors who can easily handle and promote the advantages of the current technology towards delivering a highly effective distance learning classes.
References:
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson. Chapter 2, "Definitions, History, and Theories of Distance Education", pp. 31–40.
From this week’s resources I have learned that four major components are required in order to define distance education: 1- It should be institutionally based. 2- Physical separation between the teacher and student, separation could be in both terms of geographic and time. 3- Interactive telecommunications and interaction could be synchronous or asynchronous. 4- Connecting learners, resources and instructors. (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009).
I believe that the most feasible definition for distance education is the one given by Simonson, 2003 as “instruction-based, formal education where the learning group is separated, and where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources and instructors”. Based on this definition, distance education can be simply described as “the process of creating and delivering an access to learning when the source of learning materials and the learners are separated by distance and time or by both of them”.
The definition of distance learning is always changing with the change of the technology used for implementing and managing the learning process. Other different terms could be used based on using locations and the actual use and requirements of distance education such as “ virtual schools” which refer to using distance education in schools and in my company for example we use the term Learning Management System or “ILearn” .
Distance learning programs have grown and multiplied incredibly over the past ten years, I believe in the future, distance learning will continue to evolve at the same pace of developing new technologies that will help in facilitating the delivery of learning materials. I expect it to gain more ground in the schools and universities as well as other institutes with more classes are taught online either by itself or blended with traditional classes. I also believe that the future developments will be even faster in rates than the development rates over the last ten years as a result of the growing population of the technologically educated young instructional designers / instructors who can easily handle and promote the advantages of the current technology towards delivering a highly effective distance learning classes.
References:
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson. Chapter 2, "Definitions, History, and Theories of Distance Education", pp. 31–40.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Distance Learning
Hello,
Welcome to my Blog. My name is Adel Abdelaziz; I'm working on my Masters degree of Instructional Design Technology with Walden University. I will use this Blog to publish interesting discussions about different subjects that are related to Distance Learning , so please come back to view, share ideas and post your comments. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Adel
Welcome to my Blog. My name is Adel Abdelaziz; I'm working on my Masters degree of Instructional Design Technology with Walden University. I will use this Blog to publish interesting discussions about different subjects that are related to Distance Learning , so please come back to view, share ideas and post your comments. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Adel
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