Distance Education Research: How Can it Help

Let's start by discussing the variety of research topics currently being discussed. A good overview of the types of research topics being addressed include:

• the philosophy and theory of distance education;

• distance education students;

• subject matter presentation;

• communication and interaction among students and their support system;

• administration and organization;

• economics;

• technologies; and

• history of distance education.

Each of these areas is being researched to some degree; however, there is still much research to do in almost every area. Therefore, if you are a researcher, I would encourage you to pursue any of these areas. The field is still very wide open and inviting. Three of my favorite areas of research that are beginning to produce some valuable fruit are distance education students, interaction, and distance education technologies.

The area that seems to have gotten the most research attention is distance education students. More specifically, learning outcomes have been the focus on much of the research efforts. The age old question is "Do distance learning students achieve mastery of the content as well as face-to-face learners?” On average, it appears that face-to-face and distance learners achieve about the same when it comes to learning outcomes.

Obviously, this gives fuel to both to those who are prodistance education and those who are opposed. However, those who are prodistance education point to research showing that there are a lot of nonlearning outcome benefits that distance learners can enjoy. Mostly, these come in the form of "barrier removal." Some of these barriers include physical, fiscal, time, et cetera. When these barriers to achievement are removed, opportunities to learn are greatly increased.

Another area of distance education research that is important to the quality of distance education offerings is "interaction." The interaction within a class results in the development of a "community of learners." The research has clearly shown that a sense of community and the development of a community of learners is important to learning. This is true in face-to-face classes, but even more so in distance education due to the feelings of isolation that can accompany distance learners. Learning communities can be natural relationships that emerge from interactions.

The essential question is not whether communities are important to learning, but how we can design and develop distance education materials that will result in meaningful and appropriate communities of learners.

Since interactivity is one of the fundamental concepts that will guide the design and development of distance learning, it is important to understand that the most basic type of interactivity in education and training is that which occurs between the learners and the instructors or facilitators. However, the concept of interactivity in distance education extends beyond the arena of human-human interaction to include that of interaction with media itself (human-computer interaction). Research into both of these areas is beginning to provide us with some direction. With more time and research, this will provide us with tremendous help when designing, developing, and delivering materials at a distance.

When most of us think about distance education, we immediately think of the Internet and online courses. It is true that much of distance education these days does involve the Internet. However, the key to the effective instruction is to identify the technology that will be the most effective in helping the learner master the content. Common areas of distance education technologies that are being researched include:

• Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, and podcasts;

• correspondence study;

• prerecorded media;

• two-way audio;

• two-way audio with graphics;

• one-way live video;

• two-way audio, one-way video;

• two-way audio/video; and

• desktop two-way audio/video.

This list gives us a menu from which to choose. The research shows that all of these items have pros and cons. As you design distance education learning materials, the key is to remember to choose the technology that will help the learners the most, not necessarily the technology that you think is the "coolest" or easiest to fit into your class.

Overall, we are just beginning to dig into the variety of potential research areas that impact distance education now and will do so in the future. As a researcher, your imagination is your limit. Sometimes it is difficult to be the trailblazer into a new area of research but, with patience and perseverance, this type of research can be invaluable to the distance education community.

And, for every hour a student is in class he or she should expect to spend about 2 hours outside of class preparing, reading, or studying, for a semester total of somewhere between 100 and 140 hours.

What about a class that does not have class session—an online class? If the course designer applies the same logic to an online class as to a traditional class, then, in an online course an average student should expect:

• Between 100 and 140 hours of "work "during the semester, or about 7–9 hours per week. This time would be spent reading, studying, writing, posting, viewing, listening, and chatting.

• A course that is organized around three major units, each with about five modules. Modules would be studied for about a week.

And, the instructor should also expect to devote between 100 and 140 hours of effort, organizing, posting, reading, grading, and interacting, or between 7–9 hours per week.

Effective online courses emphasize instructional content that presents in a variety of ways what students should learn. The key organizational document for the online course is the syllabus that gives most, if not all, the important information about the course content and organization. The syllabus contains the sequence of topics, course objectives, assignments, rubrics, reading and viewing lists, and other information needed by the student to "keep up and stay informed."

Additionally, the perfect online course would use a course management system. It is hard to imagine an online course, especially a "perfect" one, without a course management system. The course management system would be a meeting place, a virtual classroom, and the venue where instruction and learning interact.

Next, the online course must have a considerable amount of instructor involvement—even presentations, although lecturing by the instructor of the online course is probably not conducive to perfection. The instructor should introduce himself or herself, distribute periodic and regular organizational e-mails, personally contact individual students, make postings to threaded discussions, participate in chats, both spoken and typed, and make short and on-target presentations—single concept lectures.

Textbooks and other reading materials remain the mainstay for delivering content in most courses, including the online course. The average for a typical online course is two to three textbooks. The modern, well-chosen textbook can provide the content information for most courses.

Finally, the online course should have single-concept videos, audio explanations or descriptions, narrated visuals and other multimedia content. Also of importance are the contents of the virtual portion of the course—chats and threaded discussions, for example—that are built and constructed during the course.

Some would probably choose a different phrase than "artifacts of learning," but most who study online education look for observable objects, things, and artifacts that are evidence of student learning. A comprehensive investigation of online courses yields the following general set of expectations for student assignments:

• Three major graded assignments, usually one for each major unit of the course. These major assignments can be exams, problem/scenario solutions, research papers, group projects, or media productions.

• Approximately 10 minor graded assignments, such as discussion postings, chat participations, e-mails, wiki input, or blog postings.

These artifacts, or learning outcomes, are at the core of the perfect online course (and at the heart of almost any course, as instructional designers often tell us).

If the typical course is examined in more detail, and the major building block of the course—the unit—is examined, its organization might look like this:

• A video introduction to the unit produced by the instructor that in 5 minutes or less explains what this unit is “all about."

• An audio explanation of the major assignment for this unit, made by the instructor and posted online as an audio file; this explanation would supplement the syllabus explanation and would be what students are referred to when they ask "what am I supposed to do?" Obviously, the assignment rubric would be explained in this "podcast."

• A reading assignment of several hundred pages from one or more of the course textbooks, or a series of readings from the Web or from a course packet.

• A few short video viewings that highlight key ideas or that demonstrate important processes.

• A series of threaded discussion questions that build on one another to provide a sequenced construction of information that supports the unit's final assignment. Instructors are actively involved in discussions early in the unit, but reduce their involvement as students begin to grasp the content more completely.

• Chats, mostly between students working as individuals or in teams, in which between-student interaction is stressed. Instructors monitor chats, but are not overly involved.

• A few instructor presentations, either prerecorded or presented live using voice-over-Internet technologies.

This typical unit would last about 5 weeks, and would build on previous units of study and contribute to subsequent units. The three units in a typical online course would be the "three-legged stool" supporting the overall purpose of the course.

And finally, let us not kid ourselves; the perfect online course is a pipe dream—according to the dictionary again, a pipe dream is the result one gets from smoking one of those funny pipes, so let us be more realistic (and legal). The key to an effective course is the direct, purposeful involvement of a knowledgeable teacher; one with content knowledge, teaching skills, and design experience.