Week 1 blog assignment

WK1AssignKirbyK
Distance education: the definition has been morphed for me in the past week.  Starting this course when I thought of distance education I envisioned an asynchronous online learning environment. Online or distance education was a way for many to further their education without having to quit a job or move to a college town to attend traditional face-to-face courses.  Distance learning is rapidly becoming a popular choice for continuing professional education, mid-career degree programs, and lifelong learning of all kinds. (Moller, 2008).  This statement affirmed how I understood distance education as this is how it applies to my life.
Simonson however had a more thorough definition: distance education is: institution-based, formal education where the learning group is separated, and where interactive telecommunication systems are used to connect learner, resource, and instructors. (2012 p.32).  Reading about these four components helped me focus on what needs to be occurring in my distance education courses.
Concerns regarding the rapid increase in online/distance education programs are legitimate.  Many educators and trainers are advocating the accreditation of institutions that offer distance education to add credibility, improve quality, and eliminate diploma mills (Simonson, 2012).  If we do not take care of the quality of distance education being produced and sold to learners there is the potential of creating general disillusionment with e-learning (Moller, 2008).  It is easy to see how this could occur.  If there is pressure from institutions to get moving on distance education tracks without proper training or resources for educators who only know traditional teaching, there will be missteps. The potential lack of time to produce good quality online instruction and resources on how to create will be a major pitfall.
In my discussion this week I disclosed that my first edition of online courses was created (unknowingly) in the craft approach.  Moller restates the definition as an individual teacher fully designs and develops the course and the related materials based on what has worked in the traditional classroom and puts it on the web (Moore & Kearsley, 1996)   Several semesters later after reading literature on distance education practices and physically taking distance education courses I have improved my courses to make them more interactive in a way to better connect the learners.  Simonson said; resources should be subjected to instructional design procedures that organized them into learning experiences that promote learning, including resources that came be observed, felt, heard, or completed (2012, p. 34).
As web technology becomes ever more predominant in our society I feel like distance education will continue to boom. Dr. Simonson made a great point in this weeks’ vodcast, the idea of distance education has been for the most part accepted and is becoming respected by our society.  To become and remain respected the nurturing process needs to happen so the exponential growth of distance education can in turn occur.  This nurturing is the part that excites me and the main reason I wanted to purse a Master’s in Instructional Design and Technology.  I know the majority of my future teaching will be in the online environment.  Learning how to best serve and educate the online/distance learner in this time of rapid growth and popularity of distance education is extremely exciting.

References:
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66-70.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2013). Distance Education: The Next Generation [Video webcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2818555_1%26url%3D