Initial Thoughts on OMDE 603: Technology in Distance Education and e-Learning

The next several posts I write will be devoted to a course I am taking at UMUC for my Certificate in Technology in Distance Education and e-Learning. Incidentally, this particular course, OMDE 603, shares that title.

So far, we have reviewed the history of technology in Distance Education (DE) and discussed definitions and terminology for DE. We spent a week on asynchronous and synchronous technology and are midway through a module on Web 2.0 technologies.

There's a way in which much of this has been review for me. I took two courses for this certificate last semester: OMDE 601, which is the foundations course for DE, and a tech-heavy course, DETC 630, which focused on emerging technologies in DE and e-learning. Both of those courses prepared me well for this one. The historical context and terminology was covered in OMDE 601, and asynchronous and synchronous technologies, as well as Web 2.0 technologies, was covered in DETC 630. To that end, I'm a little stuck on what to focus on in this post that demonstrates "critical thinking attributes regarding the course readings and ideas related to class topics." I'll do my best.

First, what's interesting about Technology in DE and e-learning is that the two--technology and DE--are inseparably intertwined. Distance Education is only possible through technology and always has been (Peters). For its first hundred years, students and teachers relied on the postal service--trains and planes. Mostly trains. The middle section, sometimes referred to as the "second wave," saw improvements in speed and communication with telephones, radio, and television. The 1970s saw the first generation of computer-mediated communication (CMC) with discussion boards, and then the whole world changed in the 90s with the Internet.

Of particular note is that the pedagogy changed during these waves, too. We had a discussion about this a couple of weeks ago; it wasn't until two-way communication between student and teacher and student and student was reliable and widely available that notions of constructivism and student-centered learning came into play. The pedagogy of constructivism really took hold, or became dominant, in the 1990s and has remained so ever since, to the best of my current understanding. Note that I was steeped in constructivism and student-based learning when I was trained to teach; I'm also a compositionist. So, my field and my training give me a strong bias for not just constructivism, but social constructivism.b

The liveliest conversation thus far has been about asynchronous v synchronous technologies. I of course have a lot to say on this because of the way I structure my courses. There is a lot of bias against synchronous technologies (at a distance) in general, and especially here at UMUC, for good reason. First, synchronous technologies deserve their bad rap. Until quite recently, issues of access, reliability, and strong Internet connections have made it virtually impossible for quality synchronous sessions to happen at all (note that I'm specifically talking about web conferencing, as that's what I know best). While vast improvements have been made in these areas, at least in the United States, the technologies themselves are rudimentary, which leads to live sessions in technologies like the painfully ugly AdobeConnect that often aren't much more engaging than a face-to-face lecture. I do my best in here, but I know that I'm not taking advantage of the potential of web conferencing like I could and am eager to do. It requires a paradigm shift that I haven't completely made. For an excellent post on this, see Hybrid Pedagogy's "An Affinity for Asynchronous Learning." 

Second, for the purposes of "true" DE (i.e., 100% at a distance), synchronous sessions are impractical. Students take DE courses for convenience and flexibility. Students are in different time zones. Students have crazy schedules that preclude being able to log on at a fixed time every week. So, there's bias.

That said, even web conferencing affords an immediacy that is simply not possible on discussion boards or even pre-recorded instructor videos or podcasts (both of which are great, by the way). Discussion boards are rich, critical, reflective--this is where integrated learning happens (Garrison and Vaughan). Live sessions are also valuable, though: they bring everyone together. Students can chat with each other in real time. Instructors can answer questions in real time. Students can see and hear their instructor and, depending on the way the class is set up, each other. Social presence and instructor presence is inherently higher in synchronous sessions. It just is. I don't know that it's completely practical for an institution like UMUC...but I think that this program (Master's of DE) could benefit from incorporating more live sessions than what I'm seeing now. I attended one live session last semester in DETC 630 which was, I'm afraid, fairly useless. It was simply the instructor going over a couple of websites, which had already been done in a short video I had just watched prior to attending the live session. Not well handled, but it's a learning curve--it takes awhile to get the hang of running live sessions, to which my students, and especially my TAs, can attest.

This post is already a mile long, so I'm going to hold off on Web 2.0 technologies until my next post. Above, I've mentioned Otto Peters, one of the giants of DE scholarship, and Randy Garrison and Norman Vaughan, two DE scholars who have cornered the market on blended learning in higher ed (the title of their 2008 book). Garrison is also one of the original authors (with Anderson and Archer, 2000), of the Community of Inquiry model, in which the social presence and instructor presence concepts are rooted (or, rather, my introduction to them is).

Designer Blends

I have spent two years designing, redesigning, and improving my blend. I have spent an inordinate amount of time making and editing lecture videos, rewriting lessons for asynchronous online days, modifying them for synchronous AdobeConnect days, and scrapping both lessons at the last minute to teach the lesson face-to-face. I have surveyed my students extensively, exhausted my TAs, and pushed myself to the breaking point in getting this blend right--all while simultaneously rewriting my syllabus each semester to incorporate more lessons on information and digital literacy and transform many traditional assignments into digital ones.

From day one, my mission has been not just to maintain but to strengthen the productive, interactive community of learners that is paramount to my teaching. I believe that deep learning is rooted in Dewey's collaborative constructivism: we learn through doing, with each other. Critical inquiry and deep learning is predicated on a safe, supportive learning environment. As such, "going blended" has meant taking advantage of synchronous activities to foster exploration and experimentation in Googledocs and face-to-face classes and asynchronous activities to foster reflection in discussion boards and Voicethreads. My students are free writing, experimenting, drafting, revising, editing, and polishing work that is significantly better at the end of the semester than it is at the beginning. They are collaborating with each other more comfortably. They are writing more on the discussion boards than they ever could speak in class. We know each other better than we did even in my highly participatory, horseshoed-desked, discussion-based traditional classrooms.

The rewards can be seen through my students' writing and self-awareness. If writing is thinking on the page, and my job is to help students think critically about themselves as learners and writers, then my students need to be writing more. They are: My students produce an average of 70 pages of writing every semester, 30 of which are revised and polished. Even in my early semesters teaching blended, my students were making greater improvements in their writing than my students had in my traditional classes. They are reflecting on their digital literacy and media addictions, their research skills, and how well (or not) their high school teachers prepared them for college writing and research. They are providing more and better feedback to each other because they have more time to write careful feedback online. Plus, the online feedback is written, so students can't forget what their peers have said. They just need to go back and look.

If blended learning is seen as a method to save time and resources and increase convenience, then it's never going to gain acceptance among educators, especially compositionists. This does not bode well, for more and more college courses are being offered as blended/ hybrid every year. Resistance from compositionists is warranted if the format is pedagogically unsound, but done well, the format is not simply pedagogically sound: it's pedagogically obvious. Students are writing more, interacting more, and reflecting more. They are doing this by writing more. The net result is that my blended students are making incredible progress in fifteen short weeks, progress that I never would have thought possible three years ago. As a writing teacher, I will take nearly any risk if there's a possibility that it will help my students become better writers. The risks are high. The rewards are real.

Teaching Writing Online

I'm not surprised to see that so many of my colleagues here at CCCC resist digital innovations, teaching with technology, and teaching online. Yet I'm frustrated. How are we going to shape 21st century learning if we resist e-learning? How are we going to be part of the broader conversations about teaching writing and higher ed if we ignore the rising numbers of students who need the flexibility and convenience of online learning? Our students need instructors who understand both their needs and their preferences. They need instructors who carefully examine principles and practices of online writing instruction and distance education. They need instructors who have done the research, who have an open mind about digital pedagogy, and who aren't sticking their heads in the sand. I'm not saying online writing is right for everyone, but I think that too many educators don't understand it and don't want to, and I think that's dangerous. We're doing our future students a severe disservice if we refuse to even look at what quality online writing instruction looks like. I don't want everyone to figure is out the hard way, on their own, when faced with external pressure to start teaching online. I want my colleagues to be prepared. And from what I can see, far too many of them aren't.