The Night Is Dark …

For many, the previous 18 months have been dark and uncertain. Jobs have been changed, friends are different, and future events seem threatening—the playing field of doomsayers and charlatans preaching negativity.

Education, our professional world, has been forced to evolve in ways for which most of us were unprepared, and our specific domain, distance education, has been castigated by some with words and phrases indicating distance education is “second best” and online learning should be “abandoned.” Certainly, much has been lost.

Also, much has been gained, at least in these four areas: students, teachers, administrators, and researchers.

Students have discovered that distance education works. Students have learned and many have changed their outlook about how to learn—new skills have been acquired.

Teachers have changed also. The idea of using social media for learning has been forced on teachers regardless of subject area. The computer is now more than it was—when well-used, the computer allows communication, interaction, and idea creation—even the smart phone has been harnessed as a person’s learning device.

Administrators have been forced to develop just-in time-solutions to problems that few imagined. Some of our educational leaders have even realized that the future of teaching and learning offers a wealth of new approaches that if correctly designed will offer rich possibilities for improving schools, organizations, and colleges.

Researchers have discovered new domains for study in real-world and applied situations. Research is now needed on how to overcome problems often related to lack of understanding, or the inertia of tradition. Undoubtedly, instructional design must now be recognized as the critical element in need of a renewed level of study.

Certainly, distance education the field, and distance educators the people, have dynamic challenges generally and rich opportunities personally. Innovation born from necessity, once again.

It is interesting to wonder what politicians, our elected leaders, think of the changes to education in the last year and a half. But that is a mystery best left to talk show hosts.

The changed educational environment of the last 18 months has forced children, teachers, leaders, and scholars to evolve— the time lived through was terrible to be sure, but those times are potentially the beginning of a new understanding of education.

And finally, change is difficult, but as the wonderful poem by White encourages us: