Where was this volume when I abruptly joined the ranks of distance educators and administrators 5 years ago, foundering vainly in search of a compact guide or an initiating overview for fathoming this burgeoning, seemingly new educational enterprise?
Here now, all in one handy place, is a timely gift from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, written and compiled by Lee Ayers Schlosser and Michael Simonson: an abbreviated yet compelling history of distance education; a succinct elucidation of educational theory and practice undergirding distance pedagogy; and, best of all, 140 pages of amazingly concise and lucid definitions of key technological and instructional terms—including the maddening array of essential acronyms that pervade, plague, and rule every new field or community of scholars (“Oh, so that's what that stands for!”).
Of course, the answer to my question is that it could not have been published sooner—or it would have been that much more dated and, thus, premature. It has taken us this long to get this far. This volume is what we need for this part of the journey; we do not need an exhaustive atlas, only a useful sketch of the terrain. We are explorers at this stage, not dedicated cartographers. We need to be nimble and fleet of foot, not ponderous and anchored in any one domain for too long.
And that is the mission for all intrepid glossary makers: ignoring the peril of planned obsolescence, and marshalling the audacity to issue a/the list of “necessary” terms before the discipline has a settled (read: hidebound) consensus of what all of those items could possibly be—and mean. Just ask the venerable Samuel Johnson, credited by many as the veritable inventor of the English dictionary for upwardly-mobile soon-to-be-middle-class Brits in the eighteenth century. Between the haves and have-nots educationally, Johnson built a denotative bridge of orthography (standardized spelling) and denotation (meaning as “use in context”) to assist learners in mastering nomenclature and absorbing the grammar of discourse in their native tongue. Neither perfect nor exhaustive, Johnson's efforts served school, church, community, and individual tolerably well enough until the massive OED (Oxford English Dictionary—once blithely called, simply, A New English Dictionary) could emerge in the late nineteenth century, and finally be completed as 12 volumes in 1933 (readers interested in more information about the art and passion of dictionary making should consult Howard Jackson, Lexicography: An Introduction [New York: Routledge, 2002]). I am glad Johnson did not wait 100 years before attempting to give us all some signposts and lexicons.
Schlosser and Simonson are prudent, even conservative in what they themselves here attempt, but have, I believe, succeeded in giving us a tool that will serve not only the novice instructor and naïve administrator, but also the experienced practitioner and researcher. Selected definitions may evoke a squabble or two from her or him, you or me—but overall, the quality, precision, and focus in their choice of terms and their respective denotations are mostly unassailable. Do not try this at home. Or, if you do, keep in mind that adding more terms and pages only adds weight and length, not necessarily cogency and comprehensiveness. Sure, they could have included “X,” but then that would have only tempted them/us to wait for “Y” and “Z,” too, when our students and colleagues need A-W right now!
So how is “distance education” defined within? Well, in the preface, it is: “institutionbased, formal education where the learning group is separated, and where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources, and instructors.” Simple, if not elegant, framing of the principal partners involved and what connects them.
Later, in the glossary proper, it is a bit more elongated, to illustrate a few of the nuances that some commentators might proffer:
A generic, all-inclusive term used to refer to the physical separation of teachers and learners. (2) [Distance Education, Distance Learning, Distributed Learning] The application of information technology (and infrastructure) to educational and studentrelated activities linking teachers and students in differing places. (3) The student and instructor are physically separated by any distance. All communications are mediated by some type of electronic means in real or delayed time. Location is of no significance. (4) The organizational framework and process of providing instruction are a distance. Distance education takes place when a teacher and student(s) are physically separated, and technology (i.e., audio, video, computers, print) is used to bridge the instructional gap. (5) The organizational framework and process of providing instruction at a distance. Distance education takes place when a teacher and student(s) are physically separated, and technology (i.e., voice, video, data, or print) are used to bridge the instructional gap. (See Distance Learning.)
And that is the pattern generally in place for any major terms covered—give the user a short, to the point definition, and then follow with some overlapping, slightly emended versions that illustrate useful distinctions. Similar but slightly discrete distance-related terms such as “Distance Instruction Planning,” “Distance Learning,” “Distance Learning System,” “Distributed System,” “Distributed Learning,” are given their own entries. A bit redundant to be sure, but not off-putting, and arguably preferable to trying to pack everything into one single, encompassing term. It is a glossary, after all, not an encyclopedia.
It might be said that the opposite tack is taken with less major terms (e.g., “Netiquette”) or those that may have already found their way into common parlance (e.g., “hacker”). These terms get a brief one or two line gloss, contextualized within the vocabulary of distance education rather than defined within their original domains, say, computer programming languages or hardcore hardware development. (And this may be the first time MIT has been glossed not as “that behemoth of technological education in Massachusetts,” but, rather diminutively, as “Cohost of W3C.”) Ok, I admit a reader (even this reader) can find some odd inclusions and odder omissions. “Middleware” and “Internet2” are not here; “Electronic Book Technology” and “Shtick” are.
But in the broadband age, these are decidedly minor quibbles. When yesterday's news actually is ancient, and today's innovation may have been by-passed before it can be blogged about, any glossary is destined to be a JPEG not an MPEG, a snapshot not a moving picture, of what distance students and educators need at the moment. To say that this glossary will be superseded soon or eventually is not to criticize its authors; it is only to state the obvious.
But “at the moment” is all we have, and, truth be told, your moment may, in fact, not be my moment; for in this marathon, you could be seconds or minutes, even hours ahead of me, but then I am not trying to finish first, but rather to finish, and finish well. I do not always need the map in front of me, and some of the tributaries it could depict may be missing. But having this particular volume on my shelf equips me for the main task at hand, that is, annotating accurately theory and practice, and prepares me to speak knowledgeably to my students and colleagues while we collaboratively move on in the race. For this I am indebted to the authors.
