Opinion Article 18
The Death of Distance Education; Long Live Distributive
Learning *
Don Chapman
Introduction
In presenting this article, I have two objectives:
- to conjure an alternative perspective to the conventional notion of
distance education, and
- to think about some implications of this altered perspective.
I approach this subject as an adult educator. What I mean by this is
that when I think of education, I am seldom thinking of "kids;"
and I am never thinking only of learning which takes place in conventional
institutional settings. Adult educators often take for their focus: learning
and the adult learner, as opposed, say, to: instructional design, educational
technology, program planning, curriculum design, effective teaching, and
the like. Hence, what I have to say is driven by images of potentially
autonomous learners, extremely diverse learning needs, and an interest
in paying attention to learning opportunities wherever they may present
themselves.
Technological Change
In reflecting upon the explosion of the first atomic bomb, someone is
reputed to have said: "That day, everything in the world changed except
one thing -- our minds." The idea of the intransigent mind in the
face of revolution -- particularly of technological revolution -- is the
key theme of this article. I find a good deal of food for thought in Neil
Postman's (1992) recent work, Technopoly. Postman suggests we need to be
wary of the pervasive -- perhaps omnipotent -- presence of technology in
our lives. Humankind is not unfamiliar with technological innovation which
changes the very nature of how we conduct our day-to-day lives, and which,
in some cases, has changed our very understanding of our collective and
personal place in the cosmos. A brief and selective list of such technological
innovations might be as follows: the wheel, the written word, the telescope,
the printing press, the school, the telephone, the automobile, television,
the atomic bomb, the computer. Each of these is an example of a change
in technological capacity which, over time, has fundamentally altered our
sense of our collective and individual lives. To my thinking, each of these
changes, in a curiously paradoxical way, has been both instantaneous and
ploddingly slow. The technological innovation, itself, arises relatively
quickly. At one moment the capacity does not exist; in the next moment,
at some level, the "know-how" is present and available. A point
in time like the Wright brothers' 1903 first successful flight in a self-propelled
heavier-than-air craft gives some sense of what I mean. For example, imagine
two bystanders at the first powered flight of the Wrights' wire and fabric
craft. One turns to the other and says, "Well, I am looking forward
to watching that first manned lunar landing!" Not very likely. At
the same time as a transition in technological capacity takes place, it
often is extremely difficult for those present to imagine with any precision
the particular effects of the change upon the future conduct of human affairs.
This aspect of the change requires a change in mind. If people reflect
on such matters at all, often the assumption is that the new technique
simply will be assimilated into current practice. In 1890, who would have
imagined 1990s cities as being shaped in so large a part by the presence
of the automobile? That which was a technological curiosity -- a toy for
the wealthy -- has come to shape the social and economic fabric of North
America, perhaps of the globe.
Computer-Mediated Communication
Let us take a moment to pay attention to a technologically- based revolution
which I assert has already taken place, but which has yet to take full
form -- communication mediated by computer. By computer mediated communication,
I am referring to using the linkages among computers to obtain world-wide
access to computer data bases and world-wide (virtually-instant, but also
asynchronous) communication between and among groups and individuals who
have access to such computers. It seems to me that the rise of computer
mediated communication ought now to cause us to think less about that which
we traditionally have called "distance education" -- essentially,
the educational act of "packaging" and "delivering"
knowledge or information to somewhere else. Conventionally, the act and
concept of distance education is about producing and delivering/transmitting
information and knowledge from a "centre" to locations at a physical
distance from the centre. The notion of distance education is premised
on an absence of proximity. The conventional conceptualization is one of
"knowledge centres" being involved in "outreach," "delivering"
a commodity or a product, called education, to people who have the "misfortune"
of not being located at, or in proximity to, the centre. Distance educators
talk about: "preparing learning packages," "delivery systems,"
"learning systems" and such. In the face of the potential for
computer mediated communication as a tool for learning, the conventional
orientations to distance education really appear to represent earlier-century
educational thinking -- children of the 19th century and earlier: correspondence
education; itinerancy, mastered by Methodist ministers on horseback in
mid-to-late 1700 England; in the early years of this century, on behalf
of a newly-formed University of Alberta, educators were touring the rural
areas of the prairies and presenting talks with illuminated slide shows.
Today's distance education practices seem little more than echos of these
earlier educational innovations. The use of trendy technology such as compressed
video or computer-assisted instruction has done little to change the fundamental
pre-20th century nature of such activities -- the ways we think about teaching
and learning. In what perhaps is an effort at 1990 double-speak, some educators
have begun to use the term distance learning as a synonym for distance
education. This has a superficial tone of change, but I am suggesting that
the essential processes remain traditional. My thesis is that LEARNING
is only ever done at a distance when thought about from the point of view
of the EDUCATOR, or from the point of view of some sort of central-warehouse,
resource provider, an earlier-century perspective of educator as knowledge-source.
To me then, a phrase such as "learning at a distance," is inappropriate
and old fashioned, physically -- if not technologically -- incorrect.
Distributive Learning
In thinking about computer mediated communication, am thinking of what,
in the title to this article, I am calling distributive learning. I see
the notion of distributive learning as a sub-set of the concept "open
learning" -- although open learning often is conceptualized and operationalized
in a manner which, to me, looks much like the conventional "packaging"
& "delivering" model of distance education. As an idea, distributive
learning perhaps is most appropriately linked with the technology of computer
mediated communication. The conceptualization of learning as distributed,
(indeed, of knowledge as distributed) is one of individuals and collections
of individuals -- through the medium of the computer -- reaching toward
each other, to support each others' learning. As opposed to the conventional,
centre-out distance education perspective, the notion of distributive learning
is one of the teaching learning act as de-centred. If the learning act
remains centred at all, it is centred in each learner. Curriculum is not
something prepared and delivered; in a sense, each person becomes her or
his own curriculum. Each person is an autonomous, but connected, learner.
From this perspective, learning mediated by computer communication is never
done at a distance; it is done -- to coin a phrase -- all over the place!
For me, then, the notion of distributive learning has two key elements:
1) to construe learning as an attribute of learners and to be proximal
to the learner, regardless of the learners' physical location; and 2) a
sense of knowledge and information as de-centred, although perhaps, clustered.
Communication mediated by a computer is about making available a medium
for being linked or for being connected; it is not about physical (or,
perhaps, even temporal) proximity in any conventional sense. In distributive
learning, a concern for being in physical proximity to any resources other
than the computer terminal drops away.
Implications
A computer-mediated network such as the Internet now gives me access,
at home, to almost any resources I can imagine that I might require for
cognitive development of any kind. The microcomputer on my desk, and its
connection to the Internet, represents a world-wide resource which is not
"delivered" to me, but which I have the good fortune "to
be in touch with." Quite literally, I am now able to "reach over"
and to "touch" many of the learning resources I desire. I can
do this almost more easily than I am able to go to my refrigerator and
get a glass of milk. I do this every day -- now! So, I think, do some of
you! In such circumstances, there is a potential power shift, from the
educator to the learner. The traditional distance educator role, that of
packager and deliverer, becomes altered, perhaps looking more like the
role of archivist or public librarian. In a sense, the world of computer
mediated communication is already full of such facilitators; we call them
bulletin board sysops. On the Internet, they are list owners, Gopher developers,
creators of Archie and Veronica, World Wide Web, and the like. These educators
are working in the realm of the potentiality of the teaching/learning act
integrated into the everyday activity of all of us. These educators work
in relation to a medium which can be supportive of learning, but a medium
which really ought not to be confused with the teaching or learning acts
as they conventionally have been construed by educators who operate with
an earlier-century way of thinking. With the advent of a communication
linkage such as the Internet, if, as educators, we are going to engage
in packaging and delivery, we ought now to pay most of our attention to
packaging and delivering the medium -- access to the connecting network(s).
We also ought to be supportive of connecting potential and existing resources
to the network(s); and this includes assisting individuals to be connected
with each other. In a world of distributive learning, the teaching role
might be like the role of the farmer in planting a crop. The farmer brings
together the nutrients and the seed; having played that role, the farmer
will have little influence on the way in which any particular seed does
or does not make use of the available resources. In some sense, it is already
beyond the point of mattering whether we in traditional educational settings
are happy about the change -- already it is upon us! Today, the world of
education has changed; when and how will we change our minds?
* From the newsletter of the Quebec Association for Adult Education,
1993
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Concordia University
Department of Education, International Symposium on Distance Education,
November 1993.
References
Bosworth, D.P. (1991). Open learning. London: Cassell.
Dern, D.P. (1994). The internet guide for new users. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Internet world's on internet. (1994). Westport, CT.: Mecklermedia.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions.
(2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lane, E.S. (1993). An internet primer for information professionals.
Westport, CT.: Meckler.
Lewis, R. & Spencer, D. (1986). What is open learning? London:
Council for Educational Technology.
Lynch, D.C. & Marshall, T.R. (Eds.) (1993). Internet system handbook.
Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley.
Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic
media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Thorpe, M. & Grugeon, D. (Eds.) (1987). Open learning for adults.
Harlow: Longman.
Don Chapman
Adult Aducation Degree Programme
University College of the Fraser Valley
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