Distance Education: What Works Well, by Michael Corry and Chih-Hsiung Tu (Eds.). New York: Haworth Press, 2003, 135 pages, $19.95 [softbound], $29.95, [hardbound]).
This is an edited book that provides a means for increasing competence and professionalism among practicing distance educators. While there are certainly other forms of distance education, this volume aims primarily at computer-based distance education, the area that is clearly the fastest growing and, in my mind at least, the most challenging form of distance education yet to appear.
It is worth noting that, besides being issued in both paperback and hardback, this material was published simultaneously in the journal Computers in the Schools, 20(3) (2003). Each chapter is available for a fee through Haworth Document Delivery Service. That extent of distribution is exemplary. Given the value of the material, I would say that the investment in such widespread distribution is justified.
The book’s authors represent an impressive lineup of talented people, some of whom I have known professionally over the years and others who are unknown to me, but whose capability in online teaching shines through the lines of the book. I am impressed that the authors are talking about practical matters as people who have engaged in extensive practice. The range of practice is wide, from two articles about virtual high schools to faculty development and online teaching at university levels. The book is replete with excellent ideas, with challenges to improve one’s own online teaching practices, and with ideas about how to do so. The bibliographies at the end of each chapter provide a useful set of readings for those wanting to go deeper into the topic at hand.
I have always thought that there are major differences between online classes that reach 10-15 people—the equivalent of a seminar on campus—and those reaching much larger numbers, similar to a lecture course. Each has their strengths to exploit and their weaknesses to be worked around. Also, my sense is that frequently as educators we know how to do things better than we actually perform. The value of this book is the reassurance that such hunches about good teaching are correct: such as, that cooperative learning can be worth the investment in time (p. 52), that not every word of every threaded discussion posting has to be read by the course instructor (p. 91), and that time spent providing feedback in an organized fashion pays offin quality performance (pp. 88-89).
Let me cite from various chapters ideas that I found useful, with enough of the material quoted to convey the sense of the value of the idea.
From the chapter by David Winograd on “The roles, functions and skills of moderators of online educational computer conferences for distance education,” here are his comments on “weaving:”
Weaving was the most repeated concept in the literature of online conference moderating.. Online, the only cue that can be communicated (when someone is bored or distracted) is silence, which hardly communicates anything at all, and what it does communicate is ambiguous. Weaving is explicit metacommunication relating to an online discussion. It summarizes the discussion and extracts its major themes and disagreements to clarify a discussion that has gone off in directions that people are having trouble following.. Weaving is a skill that a good moderator learns by being aware that a discussion, over time, is not necessarily linear. It takes practice to start seeing things that appear out of order as a coherent discussion, and the moderator, at least once a week, can assist the group by weaving together recently posted ideas salient to the discussion. (p. 67)
The person moderating learns this skill through practice, but certainly coaching can help, as this chapter indicates.
The authors, Chih-Hsiung Tu and Michael Corry, describe the value of students working with others in their chapter “Building active online interaction via a collaborative learning community” as follows:
In collaborative learning small groups of students are encouraged to work together to maximize their own learning and the learning of each group member. Collaborative learning engages students in knowledge sharing, inspiring one another, depending upon one another, and applying active social interaction. Therefore, collaborative learning is an artistic rather than a mechanical process: “collaborative learning (CL) is a personal philosophy, not just a classroom technique (quoting Panitz, 1996). (p. 52)
I applaud the emphasis on social interaction among students and the attention paid by instructors of online classes to strategically engineer it. Collaborative work frequently takes more time, but students report their appreciation for it in diminishing the sense of social isolation that can easily accompany learning online.
A final mention has to do with a vision for online learning, a topic that merits more attention than it often receives. In the chapter on “Fads, distance education and the importance of theory,” Cleborne Maddux concludes with the following:
The many doomsayers notwithstanding, I, for one, do not believe that higher education as we know it will be destroyed. There will always be university campuses and students who desire to experience them, especially at the undergraduate level. The future of graduate education is more problematic, but even there I am optimistic. I believe we will rise to the occasion. Like all great trials, the present problem may have a positive side to it. We all realized that traditional higher education is not perfect, and there is much about it that can be improved. Distance education in general, and even the online diploma mills themselves, may provide the force needed to overcome the considerable inertia present in higher education and bring about some positive changes. I believe this will be so. (p. 126)
That online education has the potential to revolutionize education as we know it has been observed on multiple occasions. It is useful to have a sense of vision to move the field forward, and this chapter, as well as others in the book, provide that.
Some unanswered questions for me had to do with the use of students as assigned moderators, a practice that I frequently use in classes. Winograd alludes to this practice in his chapter, but does not suggest how to assign or train the student moderators. He provides an example of bad moderating, and takes the position that this kind of practice should be avoided; however, he does not describe how to fix it once observed. Regarding the value of student moderators, a recent Utah State University doctoral dissertation, by Dr. Kay Seo (2004), explained that where the use of student moderated groups was compared with those lacking a moderator, but given elaborate written instructions, more favorable results were observed in the moderated groups.
Most of the value of the book, I believe, will be for practitioners or potential practitioners, to cause them to question their current or future practice. What are current procedures for feedback to students, and how could those be improved? What kind of chat protocol is currently in place for online advising (Atsusi Hirumi provides a useful set in his chapter titled, “Get a Life: Six Tactics for Optimizing Time Spent Online.”). How are large classes dealt with differently from small classes? And what is our sense of vision as educators for the development of this type of education? If the book serves as the source of introspection for others to the level that it has for me, it will have served its purpose.
