Distance Education: a Means to an End, No More, No Less By DENNIS A. TRINKLE The University of Phoenix and other purveyors of distance learning have come under harsh criticism from a variety of educational quarters. Courses taken on line have been excoriated as impersonal, superficial, misdirected, even potentially depressing and dehumanizing. A 1999 report of distance education from the National Educational Association, for example, says on-line courses may disrupt the student-and-faculty interaction that creates a “learning community.” Unfortunately, much of the criticism misrepresents or ignores the realities of American higher education today. Let’s look at the paths of three actual college students who were part of a 1999 survey conducted by the American Association for History and Computing. (Their names here, however, are fictional.) Marianne Suarez, a freshman last year at the University of Cincinnati, was considering a major in history and education. To test the waters, she took a Western-civilization survey course. Twice each week she attended class with 250 other students in a cavernous room on the first floor of McMicken Hall. Visitors to the Campus might recognize it as the classroom used in the Jodie Foster film Little Man Tate. For Suarez, the classroom was the setting for a series of staged performances. With the large enrollment, the instructor could do little more than deliver well-prepared lectures and hope that the students would be inspired to pursue course themes outside of class. Three teaching assistants were on hand to answer questions after the lectures, but all of the talk in academe today about student-centered teaching, active learning, and providing a “guide on the side” was silenced by the reality of all those students packed into a lecture hall. Far across the country and several worlds away, Ian McFadden, also a first-year college student, was typing excitedly at his computer at home in Denver. Unlike Suarez, who was 18 last year and fresh from high school, McFadden was what universities call a “non-traditional” student. A lack of financial resources had compelled him to serve in the U.S. Army for six years after high school. His service complete, he was working last year as a delivery-truck driver and decided to pursue his B.A. through the distance-learning programs of the University of Phoenix. Because Phoenix’s courses are offered on a rolling basis, rather than by the semester, McFadden was able to take one course at a time; he hoped to take five or six courses last year. He received his assignments, most of his course materials, and his evaluation online, and he conferred with his instructors often, in on-line conferences and through e-mail. At the same time, back in the Midwest, Paul Toshido sat in a classroom on the campus of the DePauw University, surrounded by 30 other students. Like Suarez, he was taking an introductory history survey, but like McFadden, he was able to ask his instructor questions through e-mail. Toshido’s course offered lectures each week, as well as a wide variety of in-class and on-line discussions, debates, and role-playing. Those three students provide a glimpse of the widely divergent experiences of American college-and-university students today, and highlight the changing face of higher education. The University of Phoenix now enrolls more than 56,000 students each year, with 7,000 students taking their courses exclusively on line. According to a report by the Pew Higher Educational Roundtable, by 2000 non-traditional students like McFadden will make up at least 60 per cent of all college students. For them, distance learning will provide flexibility in terms of when, where, and how many courses to take. Increased competition among educational institutions offering such courses will probably also reduce the costs that non-traditional students will face. For such students, there is clear evidence that distance education can be as successful as classroom-based instruction, if not more so. As Greg Kearsley, a professor of instructional technology and distance education, writes in his A Guide to Online Education (http://gwis.circ.gwu.edu/~etl/online.html), those students who take on-line courses “typically find that they are drawn into the subject matter of the class more deeply than in a traditional course because of the discussions they get involved in.” That may well be because the instructor does not monopolize attention in an on-line environment. “There is no counterpart to standing at the front of the classroom pontificating to a captured audience until the bell rings!” Kearsley says. Anyone who “lectures” to an on-line group will quickly find participants tuning out and turning off the computer. Kearsley also suggests that distance education minimizes the prejudice that often arises in face-to-face settings. Unless someone deliberately reveals personal information, participants have no idea about the age, gender, ethnic background, or physical characteristics of others on line. The discussions that ensue are about as free of sociocultural bias as possible. Distance education, in short, can be more stimulating, and encourage more critical reasoning, than the traditional large lecture class, because it allows the kind of interaction that takes place most fully in small-group settings. In their recent book, Building a Web-Based Education System, Colin McCormack and David Jones -- professors of information and computing systems -- point to hundreds of anecdotal case studies and scholarly surveys suggesting that distance education is more successful than the large survey courses at many public colleges and universities. For example, the sociologist Jerald G. Schutte, of California State University at Northridge, reports (http://www.csun.edu/sociology/virexp.htm) that he randomly divided students in a social-statistics course into two groups, one that was taught in a traditional classroom and the other entirely on line: Test scores on both the midterm and the final examinations were an average of 20 per cent higher for those in the on-line course. Schutte also notes that students in distance-education courses say they have more peer contact with others in the class, spend more time on class work, understand the material better, and enjoy it more. Another study, conducted by the Sloan Center for Asynchronous Learning Environments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/vol2_issue2/arvan2.htm), reminds readers, on the other hand, that distance learning does not necessarily produce more contact with professors -- or better outcomes. The on-line course can be as abused as the traditional survey class, and the center warns against simply using teaching assistants and adjunct professors to teach massive on-line classes. Instead, it suggests, institutions should tap the potential of the on-line environment to foster small-group interaction. Moreover, we should remember that distance learning is not the only path to good education. Just as many studies praise the benefits of on-line courses, an equally wide array suggests that small classes with flexible, frequent, and face-to-face interaction among students and an instructor are optimum -- when financially and practically possible. That is the lesson of several decades of research on small class size in pre-collegiate education. Paul Toshido’s experience at DePauw raises another issue. A study conducted in 1998 by the American Association for History and Computing (http://www.mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCII1/ARTICLESII1/Trinkle/Trinkleindex.html) suggests that the most effective use of instructional technology is being made in small-class settings, where technology is being adopted not just to promote efficiency or ameliorate crowded classrooms, but to be integrated into classes that also provide face-to-face interaction. Educators must remember that, for most students, such instruction is simply not an option. Serious shortcomings in today’s American educational system provide the other side of the equation in explaining the appeal of electronic universities. Marianne Suarez’s experience in her survey course, sitting among hundreds of classmates, is shared by many other students, particularly those at large public institutions. The reality is that, as universities and colleges have become increasingly imbued with commercial philosophies, administrators have shuffled students into ever larger classes, often taught by adjuncts and mediated by stables of graduate-student teaching assistants. At the same time, administrators also sometimes mistakenly assume that distance education can solve all of higher education’s ills. The recent survey by the history-and-computing association quotes many professors who are alarmed by the rush to technology: A majority -- 65 per cent -- of the almost 500 professors who responded to the survey called their institutions’ technology policies misguided or insufficient. Charges that administrators were forcing the adoption of technology so rapidly that instructors could not decide how to use it most effectively echoed throughout the survey -- as did suggestions that an increase in full-time professors would produce as much good teaching as new computer labs would. It is clear, however, that administrators and universities are pressing ahead with a vision of computer technology as the golden solution to challenges ranging from rising costs to calls for greater accountability. Indeed, the success of the University of Phoenix and other virtual universities is not only drawing attention to the problems of access and instruction in higher education; even more, that success is seen as a market threat. Institutions are not increasing tenure-track faculty positions, reducing course sizes, or emphasizing students’ needs. But they are launching their own on-line courses. Across the country, colleges and universities are rushing to stake out their territory on the electronic frontier. As that happens, supporters of distance education -- including administrators who see it as a cheap alternative to hiring more faculty members -- need to remember that not all students are best served by electronic instruction. But critics of distance education must also keep in mind that many non-traditional students will undeniably benefit from its expansion. So, too, will the Marianne Suarezes, lost among their classmates. The reality of distance learning is complex, and we must give it the measured consideration it demands. Dennis A. Trinkle is an assistant professor of history at DePauw University, and executive director of the American Association for History and Computing. Section: Opinion & Arts Page: A60 Copyright © 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education |