Corey Ellis Distance Education

Corey Ellis Distance Education

There are several advantages to be had through distance education. However there are also disadvantages to distance education, and some scary possibilities, which could be in our future. Distance education is becoming more and more popular as time and technology progress collaterally.

With all of the money being made in distance education, universities all over are adopting their own programs to compete, whether for academic status and prestige or an added source of income nobody is really sure. One thing is for certain the concept is blowing up. With all of the talk and expansion of DE one can’t help but wonder; how far can this go? Are we looking at a possible educational revolution? Are computers going to take over education? If it were up to me I would say no, and for several reasons. First off people need people to exist. The face on your computer screen is not enough human contact and neither is email.

When we are placed into elementary school we are not there solely for educational purposes, we are also there for schooling. One might ask “well, what’s the difference?” The difference is education is a process in which we teach people information for them to retain, recall, and recite. Schooling however to me is how we teach our children to work in a public system. We teach them how to act and how to react to certain stimuli. The rest of schooling consists of their personal experiences that they have which mold them into the individuals they become. The experiences they can not have alone, the experiences that result from interaction with people. Don’t get me wrong I think distance education is great, I think it is perfect for many people. It is a premium alternative to no education at all. When I say this I am referring to DE as being used in the latter stages of an education, as a source of higher education. For some people that maybe the case; either distance education or no education. There are mothers who may want to continue their education but cannot be leaving the house because they have to tend to their child or children. There are elderly people who are incapable of driving, or may not have the energy to commute to a campus. There could even be disabled people who cannot leave bed who could earn a degree. One might say “well why would some one who can’t get out of bed want a degree, what good does it do them?” Well, it can do a lot such as boost confidence; it could motivate the person, or just occupy the person’s time with something constructive. Plus nobody said that a person stuck in bed would never get out. The list goes on for people who could benefit from distance education. It could be a busy working class citizen whose schedule doesn’t provide time for driving to class or sitting in class at a set time, he may want to get to his work when he has time, which is exactly what he will get from distance education courses.

In defense of distance education the article “The Web the Millennium, and the Digital Evolution of Distance Education” says that “schools from the industrial revolution are modeled after factories.”(The Web pg. 2) By this it means that administrators were like the boss of the factory. The successful boss would “build more buildings, bring in more students, hire more teachers, administrators, and staff to manage the process of education.”(The Web pg. 2) The more I thought about the model presented the more it seemed logical to me. It is true that people who have the money to, flock to the best schools in their local area, and those schools get more money from more taxes or from a student from outside the district who has to pay for the education. With more money they get better teachers more supplies and they get bigger just like a corporation. The sad thing about this is that our education system has been running virtually the same way for so long now and only minimal changes have occurred. We are no longer

CE300054 - 12:41am Nov 29, 1999 EST (1.)
Corey J. Ellis

part 2

We are no longer working in factories. The days where one single type of student being produced to conform to impersonal international standards are over. We need to realize that people have different learning styles, different areas/subjects of weakness, and different subjects in which they excel.

This is where another one of distance education’s advantages over traditional education applies. Colleges and Universities adopting distance education programs are doing things like: “° Reviewing present faculty make-up, educational philosophy, and orientation; ° Re-training existing or hiring new faculty; ° Evaluating what constitutes good methods of knowledge transfer in this Digital Age; ° Focusing on providing faculty with the necessary resources and support to build and maintain the electronic campus; and ° Investing in the electronic campus digital library” (The Web pg. 3)

This is not exactly what is needed to take care of the above problem, but it is a step in the right direction. If we want to modernize education we have to utilize the resources we have. Right now one of our most abundant resources is computers, hence distance education. I said before that I am referring to higher education when I talk about DE. I also stressed that we need people to complete our experience of learning. I do think however that we should introduce early on in a child’s education the concept of DE and perhaps present a small unit on it in every year or so in the curriculum. I say this because education is moving in a direction, and that direction is technology. In the future we could rely totally on computers to bring us the information we need to learn in order to keep up with international competition. Therefor it is important to integrate computers into our elementary middle and high school curriculums but not let them be taken over by computers.

There are more technological advances being produced as we speak. “The Internet with its increasing capacity to transmit synchronous and asynchronous audio, video, text, and graphics, presents educators with tremendous opportunities for distance education.” (Interactivity pg. 5) If used correctly and to their capacity we could make the distance learning programs on the Internet superior to anything on the Internet today. As many articles seem to say, DE is good but it is “predominantly electronic correspondence courses.”(Interactivity pg. 1) They seem to lack the interactivity between the student and the teacher. The only problem is at this point these new advances aren’t being used to their capacity. There are “primarily cosmetic” differences being made which do not exactly help with interactivity. People aren’t complaining though, DE is fast and convenient. They will take the increased interactivity with open arms when it arrives but, for now they are doing just fine with it.

In conclusion Distance Education is improving rapidly. There are increasing numbers of new possibilities every week. However computers should never completely take over education in any form. People are too important to the growth of other people.