This keynote presentation- Distance Education: Past, Present and Future was delievred at the Canada/Brazil Symposium on Distance Education Nov 2008 in Goianias Brazil.

1. Brazil/Canada Symposium
Distance Educa8on:
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Terry Anderson, Ph.D
Professor and Canada Research
Chair in Distance Educa8on
.

2. • “Canada is a great
country, much too
cold for common
sense, inhabited by
compassionate and
intelligent people
with bad haircuts”.
– Yann Martel, Life of Pi, 2002.

5. Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
Fastest growing university in
Canada
34,000 students, 700 courses
100% distance education
Graduate and
* Athabasca University Undergraduate programs
 Athabasca University Master & Doctorate – Distance
Education
Only USA Regionally
Accredited University in
Canada

8. Jim Farmer, 2006

9. Distance Educa8on is about
• Access: 8me, distance, cost, scalability, access
for handicapped, equity, ‘right to educa8on’
• Quality: visible, comparable, accountable
• Innova2on: disrup8ve, challenging, from craR
produc8on to industrial produc8on to post
industrial customiza8on

10. What’s in a Name?
May Use May Be
May lead to

11. Distance Educa8on:
Defini8on
1 Separa8on between teacher and learners
2 Influence of an educa8onal ins8tu8on
3 Some sort of technology to mediate
interac8on

12. 1st Genera8on of DE
• From mid 1850’s
• Lowest cost/student
• No peer interac8on

13. 2nd Genera8on of DE ‐ Broadcast
• From mid 1930’s
• High fixed cost
• Low variable costs
• No peer interac8on

14. 3rd Genera8on of DE ‐ Conferencing
• From 1970s
• Low development costs
• Real 8me or asynchronous student‐teacher
and student‐student interac8on
• Distance Classroom

15. 4 th Genera8on of DE – Personal
Compu8ng
• Asynchronous conferencing, intelligent data
bases, social soRware
• Desktop conferencing
• Immersive worlds

16. No Genera8on has completely supplanted
other Genera8ons
• Tremendous choice
• Compe8ng visions of quality
• Some technologies limit access
• Role of instructor/creator challenged
• Too lihle considera8on of cost effec8veness
• Various genera8ons do not always share same
epistemological, cultural, discipline, economic
values and prac8ces

17. Educa2onal Media
Face‐to‐face
Computer conferencing
Immersive Worlds
Video conferencing
Interac2on
Audio conferencing
Radio
Television
Correspondence/CAL
Independence of Time and Distance

18. Educa2onal Media
Face‐to‐face
Computer conferencing
Immersive Worlds
Net Based
Learning
Video conferencing
Interac2on
Audio conferencing
Radio
Television
Correspondence
Independence of Time and Distance

19. Industrial Model of Distance Educ.
• Developed by Bri8sh Open University in 1970
• High quality course packages produced by course
teams:
– Subject maher experts
– Designers
– Media experts
• Delivered by part 8me tutors
• Occasional face‐to‐face
• Very cost effec8ve
• Model adopted by the Mega university of the world
(more than 100,000 students)

20. A ques8on of Equity
• Costs of educa8on are a shared responsibility
between individuals and state
• “This indicates the scale of effort that is
needed for educa8on to re‐invent itself in
ways that other professions have already done
and to provide beher value for money.” OECD
2008
• True cost of educa8on includes costs to
students

22. Campus Teaching
Mul8media plus Tutor support
Costs
$$$ Mul8media Materials
Number of students

23. Cos8ng is a Complex!

24. Canadian Ins8tu8onal Models
• Single Mode Distance – Athabasca, Open
University
• Dual Mode: Almost every Canadian University
offers one or more degrees completely at a
distance
• Blended Learning: Replacing lecture 8me with
online ac8vi8es

25. Independent Study
Cohort or Group Study

26. Cohort (Group) Based
• Familiar model to both students and faculty
• Fits with exis8ng campus administra8ve systems
• Can support coopera8ve and collabora8ve
learning
• Associated with higher comple8on rates
• Supports teacher created, low produc8on cost
models
• Builds teacher dependency

27. Self Paced, Independent Models
• Maximizes learner freedom and flexibility
• Allows more accessible op8ons within exis8ng
campus and cohort based study
• Trains learners for lifelong learning
• Newest fron8er of research – self paced
resources PLUS social soRware

28. DE and Corporate Training
• Move to “blended training models”
• Buying realms of online training modules
doesn’t work
• Need to 8e DE with:
– Strategic business goals
– Individual learning and professional goals
• Value in developing individual learning
accomplishments as a component of
employee performance

29. Different Theories of Media
Enhanced Learning
• the presenta8onal view
– Show me be.er
• the performance‐tutoring view
– Guide me and show me where I am going wrong
• the epistemic‐engagement view.
– Let’s talk and nego<ate what this really means
Larreamendy‐Joerns, J., & Leinhardt, G. (2006). Going the Distance With
Online Educa8on. Review of Educa<onal Research, 76(4), 567‐605

30. DE Issues
• Interac8on and Independence
• Self Paced versus cohorts
• Blended versus Distance Educa8on
• Scale and efficiency
• Dropout and reten8on strategies
• Theories of Learning

31. Distance Educa8on Research
• Tremendous student need and opportunity
• See lis8ng of journals at
– hhp://www.irrodl.org/miscfiles/journalpg.html
• Common ques8ons:
– Comparing distance educa8on to campus based
– Policy and funding
– Effect of support services
– Drop out and persistence
– Effect of technologies
• Free Subscrip8on to www.irrodl.org

32. Current Research Fron8ers
Crea8ng effec8ve and efficient blends of campus
and distance formats
Con8nuous enrollment supported by emergent,
learner created communi8es
• Using new social soRware and network
affordances of Web 2.0
• Crea8on of short term coopera8ve learning
opportuni8es
• Cost efficiencies

33. The Promise of
Open Educa8onal Resources (OERs)
• “In order to scale excellence, network‐enabled
open educa8on has to be the central modality
for delivering quality educa8on, and this is
how we have to recast distance educa8on.” VJ
Kumar, 2008

34. Open Educa8on Resources (OER)
Vision + Affordance
• “At the heart of the open educa8onal
resources movement is the simple and
powerful idea that;
– the world’s knowledge is a public good in
general
– the World Wide Web provides an
extraordinary opportunity for everyone to
share, use, and reuse that knowledge.”
Hewleh Founda8on Smith, & Casserly. The promise of open educa8onal
resources. Change 38(5): 8–17, 2006

35. Hundreds of thousands of OER
available today

36. OER Granularity
– Diagrams, photos
– Ar8cles (Open access publica8ons)
– Games, simula8ons, ac8vi8es
– Units of learning (IMS LD)
– Units and courses
– Programs

37. A Tale of 3 books
E‐Learning for the 21st Open Access
Commercial publisher Century
100,000 downloads &
934 copies sold at $52.00 Commercial Pub.
1200 sold @ $135.00 Individual chapters
Buy at Amazon!! 2,000 copies in Arabic
500 hardcopies sold @ $50.00
Transla8on @ $8.
Free at aupress.org

38. Our own Experiment:
Course development based on OER’s
• 4 Athabasca University courses:
– Nursing,
– Communica8ons (Theatre)
– English for Business, &
– Educ. Tech
• Vastly different results
Cri8cal variable was the awtude of the
• Chris8ansen, J., & Anderson, T. (2004)
Feasibility of course development based on learning objects: Research analysis of three case
developer(s)
studies. Interna<onal Journal of Instruc<onal Technology and Distance Educa<on,

39. Portugese OERs ??
• Este site e dedicado ao trabalho colabora8vo para traduzir o documento
Open Educa8onal Resources: the Way Forward, para o Português.
• O documento quot;Recursos Educacionais Abertos: O caminho adiantequot; é fruto
do reflexo colabora8vo desta comunidade rela8vo à como ampliar o movi
mento dos OER. O PDF em ingles deste ar8go pode ser baixado aqui:
• * Open Educa8onal Resources: the Way Forward (PDF)
hhp://oerwiki.iiep‐unesco.org/index.php?8tle=OER:_the_Way_Forward/
Collabora8ve_work_on_transla8ons/Portuguese_Version
• hhp://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?8tle=Category:E‐
learning_resources_in_portuguese

40. Is DE Beher than Classroom Instruc8on?
Project 1: 2000 – 2004
• Ques8on: How does distance educa8on compare
to classroom instruc8on? (inclusive dates
1985‐2002)
• Total number of effect sizes: k = 232
• Measures: Achievement, Awtudes and Reten8on
(opposite of drop‐out)
• Divided into Asynchronous and Synchronous DE
40

41. Summary of results: Achievement
Achievement Outcomes
*Significantly heterogeneous average effect
41

42. Summary of results: Awtudes
Attitude Outcomes
*Significantly heterogeneous average effect
42

43. Summary of results: Reten8on
Retention Outcomes
*Significantly heterogeneous effect sizes
43

44. Primary findings
• DE and CI are essen8ally equal (g+ ≈ 0.0 to low
average effect) on all measures
• Effect size distribu8ons are heterogeneous; some
DE >> CI, some DE << CI
• Generally poor methodological quality
• Pedagogical study features account for more
varia8on than media study features (Clark, 1994)
• Interac8ve DE an important variable*
*Lou, Y., Bernard, R.M., & Abrami, P.C. (2006). Media and pedagogy in undergraduate distance
education: A theory-based meta-analysis of empirical literature. Educational Technology
Research & Development, 54(2), 141-176.
44

45. Distance Educa8on on the Long Tail
Chris Anderson (2004)

46. • • Open Access e‐book
• 53 stories of how university
faculty crea8ng blended
learning in their courses
• Blended – reduces
classroom 8me by at least
25%
• Michael Starenko, 2008

47. Interac8on in DE
Anderson,
2003
IRRODL

48. Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem
(2003)
Moore (1989) dis8nc8ons are:
 Three types of interac8on
o student‐student interac8on
o student‐teacher interac8on
o Student‐content interac8on
Anderson (2003) hypotheses state:
 High levels of one out of 3 interac8ons will produce
sa8sfying educa8onal experience
 Increasing sa8sfac8on through teacher and learner
interac8on interac8on may not be as 8me or cost‐effec8ve
as student‐content interac8ve learning sequences
48

49. Do the three types of interac8on
differ? Moore’s dis8nc8ons
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes
Interaction Achievement Attitudes
Categories k g+adj. k g+adj.
Student-Student 10 0.342 6 0.358
Student-Teacher 44 0.254 30 0.052
Student-Content 20 0.339 8 0.136
Total 74 0.291 44 0.090
Between-class 2.437 6.892*
Moore’s distinctions seem to apply for achievement (equal importance), but not for
attitudes (however, samples are low for SS and SC)
49

50. Does strengthening interac8on improve achievement
and awtudes? Anderson’s hypotheses
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes
Interaction Achievement Attitudes
Strength k g+adj. SE k g+adj. SE
Low Strength 30 0.163 0.043 21 0.071 0.042
Med Strength 29 0.418 0.044 18 0.170 0.043
High Strength 15 0.305 0.062 5 -0.173 0.091
Total 74 0.291 0.027 44 0.090 0.029
(Q) Between-class 17.582* 12.060*
Anderson’s first hypothesis about achievement appears to be supported
Anderson’s second hypothesis about satisfaction (attitude) appears to be
supported, but only to an extent (i.e., only 5 studies in High Category)
50

51.  Bernard, Abrami, Borokhovski, Wade, Tamin,
& Surkes, (in press). Examining Three Forms of
Interac8on in Distance Educa8on: A Meta‐
Analysis of Between‐DE Studies. Review of
Research in Educa<on

52. The Community of Inquiry Model
Garrison, Anderson,
Archer, 2004

53. COI Valida8on
• Originally validated through transcript analysis
• Now standardized survey instruments
• Used to inves8gate F2F, immersive and
synchronous models of distance educa8on
• Correlated with student sa8sfac8on and
achievement

54. • Theore8cal Models like COI can be useful:
– Descrip2ve power: – making sense, accurately
depic8ng
– Rhetorical power: help us reflect and talk about
our experience
– Inferen2al power: help us to evolve and test
educa8onal innova8ons and interven8ons
– Applicatory power: Helps us design interven8ons
C with greatest likelihood of working in real contexts
• Halverson, C.A. (2002). Ac8vity theory and distributed cogni8on:
Or what does CSCW need to DO with theories? Computer
Supported Coopera<ve Work 11: 243–267.

55. Future of Distance Educa8on
• A component of all modes of formal educa8on
• Moving from formal educa8on to informal,
lifelong learning
• Moving from informal learning to informal
accredita8on

56. Conclusions
• There are many models and types of distance
educa8on
• DE has poten8al to increase access and
decrease costs of formal educa8on
• DE will help develop a culture of lifelong
learning
• DE is challenging, disrup8ve and fun!

57. Conclusion
• Illich inspires us to search for
and build “educa<onal webs
which heighten the
opportunity for each one to
transform each moment of
his living into one of learning,
sharing, and caring”
• Illich, 1970