Distance Learning - Why? What? How?
with Some Examples
Martin@lii.law.cornell.edu
I. Why?
External factors:
Because the competition is doing it or will
Because students expect it (and view it as a measure of quality)
Given the new means of distributing content (text, still images, audio,
video) and conducting interactive communication, distance learning technology
affords a way to:
Reach new students
Involve teachers previously unavailable
Meet the learning styles and needs of diverse students
Increase student-faculty inter-action
Encourage peer-to-peer learning
Provide program more closely matched in time and place to the situation
that prompts the learner's desire to learn
Extend the duration of the educational experience (pre and post)
II. What?
Distribution of text (images, audio, and video)
Flat text
Text as a gateway to broader or deeper exploration (course materials for
Copyright and Digital Works and the Background material for this discussion)
Discussion (teacher-student and student-student)
Asynchronous - Web-based conferencing and its functional equivalents (Copyright
and Digital Works WebBoard Conference)
"Real Time" - Audio / Video Conferencing (Copyright and Digital Works
weekly CUSEEME "class meeting")
Testing, evaluation, personal accountability points
Submitting papers
Everybody provide an example (WebBoard)
Everybody solve a problem
III. How?
Some of the principal determinants:
Technology access and expertise level of the students you want to reach
(monitor, don't assume)
Parallel tracks
Digital only
Technology access and expertise level of the faculty
Competing demands on time and attention of students and faculty
Expectations of students and faculty
Regulatory, fiscal, administrative categories
IP rights
Some strategies:
Begin by adding distance components to current programs
Focus on what you want to do and for whom rather than on a particular
technology
Draw technology support people into collaboration (here is what I want
to do rather than this is what I want)
Listen to your student
Some novel challenges:
Finding new pedagogy for the new environment
Building community across institutions (or without them)