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.
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