Collaborative Interaction

According to Dr. George Siemens, acceptance of distance education is growing due to the increase of online communication between people, whether they are family members, colleagues or strangers with whom they need to collaborate. Communication and collaboration with diverse and global groups has become much easier and more efficient in these last years. Dr. George Siemens believes that distance education will be impacted by new communication technologies, and that the higher education institutions will all gradually adopt distance education technologies although he also believe that face-to-face education will not be abandoned. Dr. Siemens did nevertheless not believe that k12 education would adopt national requirements for distance education. I also believe that online communication has become very important, and that people whether they are young or old are starting to use this technology to communicate among themselves.

According to Palloff and Pratt (2005) collaborative activity is important both in the face to face education and in distance education as it promotes the development of critical thinking skills; reflective thinking; creation of knowledge and meaning with collaborative group and transformation thinking.

Collaborative online communication is a very important aspect of distance education. The collaborative tools are more by the day; there are the wikis where participants are able to collaborate in the creation of documents, blogs where participantes are able to share their work, interact and collaborate, some social networking sites such as wiggio where students are able to collaborate and even use the tools in the classroom. There are google docs, google groups; voicthreads, there are also tools for videoconferencing among which we find skype. There is also Elluminate, Webex and Dimdim5 for webconferencing.

Maria

Distance Learning

Distance Learning

"Distance education can be defined as Formal education in which the learning group (teachers, students, resources) are separated by geography and sometimes by time." (Simonson, 2010)
Distance education is not identical to face to face education, it is equivalent. The courses have the same learning outcomes but in distance education learning experiences need to be provided in order to accomplish the outcomes.

Distance education is becoming very popular in post-secondary education. According to Moller,Foshay, and Huett, (2008, July/August) distance education will become dominant with concerns such as course development, workload, intellectual property rights, collaboration and salary. In the future competition will be in favor of institutions which provide the best and most effective distance education.

K12 education does not have as much demand as does college education. In the k12 site based distance education is becoming very popular. In rural areas site based distance education allows highly qualified teachers to instruct students, that otherwise would not have any teachers.
Some online high schools allow students to take courses from home while others require computer labs supervised by teachers. In the case of K12 instruction, there are few opportunities for personal interaction and the student may feel isolated. The amount of independence, the synchronous versus asynchronous environments and technology required needs more research. I personally think that distance education is a breakthrough and that through distance education students all over will have e access to education.

References:

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W. & Coleman, C. (2008, September/October). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the Web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5), 63–67.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Distance Education: The Next Generation [Webcast]. Principles of Distance Education. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, July/August). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the Web (Part 2: Higher Education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66–70.