"this is all about cheap"

Lisa posted an interesting article in The New York Times called More Pupils Are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality

The article starts off contrasting why many states say they are using online course (i.e. preparing students for a global economy and to prepare students for higher education) with what they believe is the real driving force--to save money. One example that they provide is what Tom Luna has proposed in Idaho. If his measure passes students will be required to take four online courses to graduate and Idaho's state legislature just passes a bill that would provide each 9th grade student with a laptop using money that they will save from teachers salaries. This is just the beginning and Luna recently said that four courses was “going to be the starting number.” I am not against requiring online courses but online courses require teachers too. It feels like Luna has introduced a form of independent study courses with little learner-instructor interaction which I think can be dangerous for some adolescent learners. They said that Memphis also requires their students to take an online course and that "Memphis supplies its own teachers, mostly classroom teachers who supplement their incomes by contracting to work 10 hours a week with 150 students online. That is one-fourth of the time they would devote to teaching the same students face to face." That is just bad policy. One advantage of online learning is that allows for more direct tutoring and contact from teachers. Teaching 150 students is a full time job.

The article also talked about how online courses are being used to makeup credits called "click-click credits." This is being done to help increase graduation rates and avoid federal sanctions. I don't believe that online courses should be any easier than face-to-face. If online courses require less work for the same credit it is problematic and hurts the credibility of online learning.

They also talk about how students are cheating in online courses. They give an example of a student who copied a paper from Wikipedia. I don't think that is a problem with online learning. The same thing happens in face-to-face.

I don't see any of these problems as problems with online learning but problems with policy and instruction. As the student population becomes more diverse the less cost effective it will be. Traditionally online students have been self-motivated who need less contact. However, as students who are less motivated are required to take online courses the time teachers need to spend with on learner-instructor interaction will increase along with the cost.

Interaction models

I was thinking how I could represent the human interactions by their types and purpose of interactions. The yellow circle represents instructors' interactions, the blue circle represents parents' interactions, the red circle represents students' interactions, and the gray circle in the middle represents interactions focused on content. I identified 13 different combinations.

L-L-S=learner-learner-social
I-I-S=instructor-instructor-social
P-P-S=parent-parent-social

L-I-S=learner-instructor-social
L-P-S=learner-parent-social
P-I-S=parent-instructor-social

L-L-C=learner-learner-content
I-I-C=instructor-instructor-content
P-P-C=parent-parent-content

L-I-C=learner-instructor-content
L-P-C=learner-parent-content
P-I-C=parent-instructor-content

L-P-I=learner-parent-instructor

There are a few things that I don' t like about this representation. First, it is not complete because it only includes social and content interactions and not procedural/administrative. (I could figure out how I could add the third.) Second, the learner-parent-instructor is just in the content circle. Also, this includes interactions that I am not sure would exist and if they did they wouldn't really have a large affect on student learning. For instance parent-parent-content. Would parents get together and talk about content? They would talk about social and procedural.administrative topics in a parent organization but I don't see them talking about the American Revolutionary War.

This is a representation that fits Anderson's (2004) categories of interactions. This reaffirms that he was complete in his identification. However, I am still not sure how important some of them are.

Subject of Interaction

Today I have been trying to find information on the nature of interaction. I couldn't find much but I did find out some interesting things. I was reading Anderson (2004) chapter in the handbook and he made reference to Burnham and Walden (1997). It was just a conference proceeding but it gave me some good insight. The first is that what we have been calling nature he has been calling subject which I think in someway is more accurate. They also talk about Learner-environment interaction which Anderson said could include family. I think that this may be helpful when I talk about parent interaction. Anderson also talked about how he doesn't consider learner interface interaction to be a distinct types of interaction but a part of all other types of interaction. The following is my synthesis of what I found:

Burnham and Walden (1997) stated that "interactions have objects (things learners interact with that influence the learner) and subjects (things that the interactions are about). These two elements can and should play an important part of any classification of interactions" (p. 52). Several researchers have attempted to move beyond the types or objects of interaction and have tried to classify the different subjects of interactions. For instance Gilbert and Moore (1998) grouped interactions as either social or instructional. They defined social interactions emotional or informational communication that does not directly result in an improvement of student content understanding but can have a positive effect on the learning environment. Instructional interactions were defined as being content focused with the explicit goal of improving student content understanding including the direct presentation of learning materials and formative verbal assessments (Gilbert & Moore, 1998).

Similarly Huang and Wei’s (2000) review of social psychology literature found that group communications are commonly categorized as either task or social interactions. They also provided the following definitions, “Task interactions of a group are directly related to the group’s tasks and are involved in asking for or giving information, suggestions, directions, and possible ways of action, whereas social interactions are directly related to relations between group members or internal needs (or preferences) of members” (p. 183). Huang and Wei’s definition of social interactions differs from Gilbert and Moore (1998) in that it does not explicitly include informational exchanges regarding progress. Olson et al. (1992) added that interactions focused on the progress and procedures necessary are better grouped into a different category they term management or executive interactions.

In the context of a virtual high school setting, Hawkins (2011) grouped interactions as either social/supportive, instructional/intellectual, and procedural/organizational interactions. Social/supportive interactions are used to motivate, encourage, and create a sense of closeness. Instructional/intellectual interactions are centered on the course content and include providing clarification and feedback. Procedural/organizational interactions are focused on policies, procedures and progress.

The Normative Influence Theory

Huang WW, Wei KK. An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Group Support Systems ( GSS ) and Task Type on Group Interactions from an Influence Perspective. Journal of Management Information Systems. 2000;17(2):181-206.

In class last time we talked about how 40% of interaction is off task. I was really interested in that so I looked up the article from the citations. Interestingly the article only made reference to another article that made the claim. However, I started to read the article and found an interesting paragraph.

"The normative influence theory posits that human beings often need to seek approval and a sense of belonging, and the aim in human social relations is for harmony and communality. There are generally four sources of normative influence: dominance, majority power, persuasiveness, and hierarchy status [19]. Informational influence theory assumes the centrality of being correct, of knowing and understanding the world, and therefore of needing and processing factual information. Sources of informational influence include factual information sharing [55], factual and task messages/rationales/ arguments [57, 67]. Hence, normative influence theory seems to focus more on interpersonal relationships whereas informational influence theory emphasizes more the exchange of factual information and the search for task truth, which conceptually corresponds to the main characteristics of social and task interactions respectively."

This supports our categorization of the nature of interaction. I was also thinking that their description of the normative influence theory supports the use of high fidelity interaction. I also feel that it can help explain the "energy" of a conversation.

Funny. I just wrote this and then as I kept reading I found this paragraph:

"In group interactions, conflict resulting from different values and preferences would
be better resolved in FtF talks with multiple social cues. For example, personal pref- erences can be better expressed simultaneously in the tone, speed, and content of verbal statements, and in the facial expression and gesture of nonverbal behaviors. However, the tone and speed of verbal statements and the facial expression and ges- ture of nonverbal behaviors do not exist within the electronic communication channel of a GSS. Only the content of verbal statements can be communicated in the form of electronically written messages. Hence many social cues are reduced or eliminated in GSS electronic communication [53, 91, 93, 99], which would in turn hinder the ex- change and understanding of personal preferences and values."

Using Facebook in Online Learning

Image location

Article Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/03/23/facebook.underage.users/index.html?hpt=C2

Yesterday in class we talked about how Facebook could be used to hold impromptu conversations between students. In some ways using Facebook makes sense in the upper grades because most students are using the technology already. This article says that "roughly 64% of 13-year-olds are social networking; between the ages of 14 to 17, that figure jumps to 82%." However, the danger is that these impromptu conversations can become too casual, blurring the lines between teachers and students.  There have already been lots of teachers who have been fired for inappropriate use of social media. For instance, here is one example at a school close to where I taught.  I recently talked to a high school teacher about her school district's social media policy.  I was shocked that they didn't have one.  The district simply tells the teachers to "be safe" and "don't do anything dumb."  I think that a "policy" like that is just asking for trouble.  Teachers need to have a better awareness of internet safety and privacy issues with using Facebook.

It's also important to note that Facebook can be addicting for adults and I would assume that the addicting effects would be even greater for young students who have lower self-regulation skills.  I believe that schools/teachers should work with parents and students to provide them with guidelines for using social media safely and responsibly.  The following video discusses some of the addicting effects of social media sites such as Facebook.

Disrupting Class

Christenson suggests there are two major forms of innovation: sustaining and disruptive. As consumer needs grow companies with develop products to meet those needs such as faster cars, higher resolution digital cameras, or c.d. players that can hold multiple disks. In fact companies will create products with more features than a consumer can use in an attempt to stay relevant. These product improvements are called sustaining innovations and the winners of sustaining innovations are almost always the current industry leaders.

Unlike sustaining innovations, disruptive innovations are not product improvements. In fact when disruptive innovations are first brought to the market they are not as good as the existing products. As a result the current customers have no need for them and the disruptive innovation’s original buyers are those who either did not have the knowledge to operate or the means to purchase the superior product. The first consumers of the disruptive innovation are what Christenson refers to as “non-consumers” because they were not purchasers of the original product.

In education one disruption is distance learning technology. I attended high school in a small rural school district. Like most rural schools we did not have the resources or the demand to offer many advanced placement courses. There was one option of taking an advanced chemistry course using synchronous video communication. Although this option was not as good as having an in-house teacher it was better than the alternative which was no class at all. The same type of distance learning courses is being offered in rural schools across the country.

Harris' presentation at NECC talked about how the surge of technology in classrooms has had little effect on how teachers teach. One possible reason is because they are largely crammed into the old ways of doing things. Teachers used them to help with administrative tasks such a keeping grades and taking role. Students would largely use them to write research papers. Although these are positive additions to the classroom it falls short of Christenson's vision of how technology should be used

Christenson also stated that technology should be used in a way that teaches students how they learn best. Christenson cites Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences believes that disruptive technology should replace standardized instruction with individualized instruction to meet the different intelligences that students have.

Christensen thinks that Web 2.0 technology will facilitate the creation of these instructional tools. Similar to iPhone applications, students and parents will build and share educational products that will meet the unique needs of individual learners. They recognize that these tools would not be as good as personal tutor or one-on-one teachers. However, these tools would not try to be better than personal tutor. They would be useful only to the consumers or those who could not afford a personal tutor. At first these tools only have to be better than the next available option which is no tutor at all. As this disruptive technology creates sustaining innovations it has the ability to completely disrupt the current model of instruction.

In Christensen's classroom the teacher will move away form the sage-on-the-stage and move closer to a guide-on-the-side role. Teachers will be needed to help students select and use these learning tools. Teachers will also need to adopt more of a cheerleader and motivator role in the classroom as each student uses the learning tools that best match their intelligences.
I agree with Christensen in a lot of areas. We can also see that technology is being used in a disruptive way with online education and the Khan Academy. However, the Khan Acadamy does not address individual learning styles. I am also not sure that students should or need to be taught according to their individual learning styles all of the time. I think that the Khan Acadamy model is similar to Christensen's vision, makes best use of the affordable of technology and the personal influence of the teacher, and is more practical to implement. I also disagree with Christensen's predictions of how fast public education will be disrupted. One prediction is that by 2019 half of all high school courses will be delivered online. He supports his prediction with several examples from industry such as the ipod, personal computers, digital cameras. However, public education is so highly regulated and resistant to change that I don't foresee that happening so quickly (not to mention that high school is used as a babysitting service).

The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research

I have been studying social presence and teacher immediacy. Both are established through verbal and nonverbal behavior. However, when you are looking at student’s video comments it is hard to separate the two. I just did a little experiment and watched several video comments with the sound turned off and I tried to guess their emotional state. At times the expressions and gestures allowed me to guess correctly and other times the video was little help at all. Once I was sure that the student was confused but when I turned on the sound and listened to what she said and the tone that she used when she said it I found that she wasn’t confused at all. In fact it was quite the opposite. I knew I needed help understanding nonverbal behavior and how to measure it. I found The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research eds. Jinni A. Arrigan, Robert Rosenthal, and Klaus R. Scherer (2005).
The chapter I read was Nonverbal Behavior in Education by Elisha Babad. She starts by saying that verbal behavior is most important for education. However, nonverbal behavior can facilitate or hinder learning. In a face-to-face environment teachers are often not allowed to express how they really feel—carefully choosing their words and sentences and it is the nonverbal communication that tells the truth.

History of Nonverbal Research

Stanford University Teacher Education Program began video recording teachers as way to facilitate self-inquiry. Although it wasn’t their original purpose they quickly discovered that nonverbal communication had an effect of teacher-student interaction and as a result on student learning. These behaviors included “teacher’s position toward the entire classroom, focusing on appearance, dress, poise, use of voice, body and hands, movement in the classroom, teacher’s enthusiasm, eye contact etc.” (p. 285).

They also talked about the controversial “Doctor Fox” studies in which a charismatic, interesting, and funny actor played the role of a lecturer to a group of in-service teachers. Although the lecture lacked any substance the actor received great reviews on his expertise and grasp of the content. This was used to show that student ratings lacked validity but others disputed that contention.

They also talked about teacher immediacy and teacher enthusiasm research. I was very familiar with teacher immediacy but I had not heard of teacher enthusiasm research. It turned out that they are nearly identical but teacher enthusiasm came from research on student evaluations in higher education. Both fields of research showed that nonverbal communication produced higher course outcomes.

The chapter also mentions that students nonverbal behavior is important because it “provides the teacher with information about a student’s comprehension, motivation, and involvement at a given time, enabling him/her to handle the student in the most appropriate and effective way” (p. 291) They talk about this in a synchronous context in the “flow” of the lesson but I obviously is important in asynchronous learning.

They also talk about how skill training is important for teachers. I think that an interesting article would be how to effectively use asynchronous video to establish presence or immediacy. I know that Rick published a similar article in tech tends on how students can develop community in an online course.

Methodological and measurement issues in nonverbal research in education

Mostly educational research uses “low-inference measurement.” This happens when the researchers has operationalized the behaviors and records to behaviors that they observe. This made research less practical and expensive. High inference is much more practical and cost effective. It is where “the observer not only records the classroom behaviors but also makes inferences and judgments about their meaning and about what occurred in the classroom” (p. 293). In addition you can use student surveys to make judgments about the class climate.

How can Nonverbal behavior be measured?
1. Ask participants their impressions
2. Conduct behavioral observations
3. Videotape ongoing behavior

After the data is gathered researchers will use a theory to measure it. On page 298 it has some lists of what immediacy looks like.

What this didn't have was guidelines for coding video. I know that Rick and Peter have done some of that and I think that I will talk with them. Coding video is also low inference which is good but it feels like the field no longer does that because of cost and practicality issues. I that is the case I'm not sure how helpful a video coding paper would be.

Clayton Christensen

I really enjoy reading Clayton Christensen's writing. Here are two articles I recently found.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen tells college chiefs their institutions may not be around in 20 years

Online learning for student-centered innovation

Khan Academy

I have heard of Khan Academy before but this video gave me new insights. This video touches on blended learning, humanizing learning, collaborative learning, community, interaction, motivation, etc. It really reminds me of the discussion we had at the start of the semester on letting teachers do what they do best and letting computers do what they do best.

I did my reflection on Facebook.

Giving life

I really enjoyed the devotional today on interactions with others that are motivated by love and by doing so we give them life. How do we do that in Distance Education?

Thoughts on a K-12 Framework

What:
Parent Presence--

• motivates students to have high cognitive presence and quality learner-content interaction. This can be done through clear expectations, incentives, adding structure to the the student's time
• sets the physical environment i.e. does the student have school supplies, other basic needs, and a place for effective learner-content interaction

Instructor Presence--

• Motivates student to have high cognitive presence and quality learner-content interaction. This is mostly done through grades, prompts, and verbal encouragement.
• Selects the content and delivery methods.
• Helps the student apply their knowledge through assignments and other assessments both formative/summative and formal/informal
• Sets the virtual environment. This is done by setting expectations of interaction and selecting communication tools (high fidelity vs low fidelity)
• Influences student social presence

Social Presence

• The ability to be seen as a real person

Cognitive Presence and other positive course outcomes

• Cognitive presence is high level thinking.
• Positive outcomes can include grades, disposition, enjoyment, perceived learning

How

• I am still working on the how. This is basically the same Garrison's framework. However, one difference is the interplay between parents and instructors. If parent presence is low instructor presence must be higher.

New Outline

Introduction

K-12 Online Learning is Growing

• 1,000,000 K-12 students are involved in online learning
• 47 states have significant K-12 programs
• Michigan and Alabama require high school students to take online courses
• Several other states including Idaho have proposed similar requirements
  

One drawback to online learning models is a lack of quality interactions which can contribute to:

• low sense of community
• sense of isolation
  
• higher dropout rates
• cheating
• others?
  

Although interactions have been correlated with positive course outcomes in a higher education setting, little research has been done on the K-12 setting. Differences in the K-12 environment make it difficult to generalize higher education finding to the K-12 setting.

• Lower self-regulation abilities
  
• less motivation
• need for more social interactions

The purpose of this study is to examine how interactions affect positive course outcomes in a K-12 setting.

Literature Review

Moore’s Three Forms of Interaction

• Forms

§ Learner-instructor

§ Learner-content

§ Learner-Learner

§ Need for two additional forms of interaction: Learner-Parent and Parent-Instructor

• Nature of Interaction
  

§ Social

§ Procedural

§ Content

Benifits of interactions (review research studies)

Gaps in the research

• K-12 context
  
• parental interactions
• account for self-regulation abilities

Research questions

• 
  

Method Table

Online vs Distance Education

Garrison wrote an article that attempted to show that online learning was distinct form distance education. He claimed that the goal of distance education was independence and the goal of online education is collaboration. he then contends that online theories and distance education theories can not be combined.

Anderson then wrote an article is in response to Garrison's article. Anderson's first contention with Garrison's article is that it "seems to have missed many important developments relating to distance education and obscures the evolution of distance education in its use of online technologies" (p. 111). Garrison tends to only view distance education in its earliest form. Anderson takes the view that distance education has evolved in include new forms of interaction, pedagogy, and support services over time as technology has evolved. Although Garrison sees independence as the goal of distance education, Anderson states that very little of today's distance education is independent study. Garrison also makes the distinction between online learning and distance education. Again, Anderson disputes this separation and considers online education as one form of distance education. Interestingly he uses Garrison's own definition of distance education as support (see page 112).

Anderson describes the evolution of distance education in three stages. The first was main correspondence. Second,was mass media or television and radio broadcast. Third, was marked by video, audio, and text conferencing--much like online learning. "Arguing that distance education is inherently about independent study is akin to arguing that operating an automobile means cranking the engine by hand-just because engine cranks were once a feature of all automobiles" (p. 113).

Anderson also takes issue with Garrison's assertion that there is a lack of theoretical development in distance education. He cites that 3.5% of articles are theory based. Next, Anserson's disagrees with Garrison's thought that Moore's theory of Transactional Distance is an Independent/distance education theory and sees this theory as having clear application to online learning. Anderson also considers Garrison's question of the possibility of a convergence of distance and online learning as meaningless because he sees online learning as part of distance education.

Industrialized Education

Last class we talked a little about Industrialized Education and Peter's theory. Now it feels like every article I read talks about it. I wouldn't mind spending some more time talking about it class. Is there a Peter's article that you recommend reading?

I have to say that I found more variety in researchers rationals then I thought I would. I can also tell that I will find a lot of variety in research methods. I found at least two studies that use grounded theory and one of the articles reads more like a novel than a typical research paper. I was also surprised that research questions were not more clearly written. In a few articles I had to go searching for them. I found a lot of good articles from some top authors in Journal of Distance Education. I will have to review that journal more closely. I don't know if it is a top journal but Garrison, Rovai, and Anderson were all publishing in it (it fact they all kind of got into a debate about CoI).

Theoretical Challenges for Distance Education in the 21st Century: A Shift from Structural to Transactional Issues.

I found a really interesting article by Garrison:

Garrison, R. (2000). Theoretical Challenges for Distance Education in the 21st Century: A Shift from Structural to Transactional Issues. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1(1), 1-17.

This was the same your that CoI was published. This article kind of feels like their warm up to that article. Saba (2005) and Garrison note that distance education is full of confusion due in part to its rapid growth and the development of new terms. He notes "that theoretical frameworks and models are essential to long-term credibility and viability of a field of practice." The need for credibility reminded me of the quote from Davies, Howell, and Petrie (2010) that distance education has a “deep-rooted insecurity within the distance learning community—a fear that distance education is regarded as a somewhat substandard and less valued educational practice” (p. 44). Garrison says that theory is important to provide credibility, guide future developments, describe what is, help predict what will be, provide understanding for effective action to researchers and practitioners, and reduce complexity while still maintaining the ability to generalize. Cavanaugh et al. (2009) also stated that the "fundamental challenge in this relatively new educational field for program developers, managers, and instructors is locating guidance." A good framework would provide this guidance.

Although in class we use the terms synonymously, he also distinguishes a theoretical framework from a theory in that a theory is more complete and a framework/model is a "less abstract form of a theory and represents structural relationships among the key concepts. It is a replica and often provides visual simplicity that can be grasped at a glance." (p. 3-4)

Another Garrison article said that CoI is "generic in that it is conceptually grounded in theories of teaching and learning in higher education." Does that mean that its main focus is on higher education? I also thought that it was interesting that they also feel that CoI should be applied to other non-educational settings. I wonder what that would look like.

One other thing that really stuck out to me in my readings on Community of Inquiry was that it was developed to analyze courses with text based communication. That was really made clear in the 1997 article. That helps to why they first focused on developing a coding system. I was also surprised to read that most research has only examined individual constructs and few have examined the framework as a whole. I found myself doing this social presence.

"The primary issue of concern emerges at the intersection of social and cognitive presence. Students recognize that they are not there for purely social reasons. A sense of community is based upon common purposes and inquiry." (p. 159). This is true. I also agree that social presence can positively influence cognitive presence. They also noted that teacher presence allowed for cognitive presence to thrive. They asked the question if social presence could distract from cognitive presence. I don't know why that would be the case.

Interaction vs. Dialogue

In one article Moore makes the distinction between an interaction and dialogue. Although the two terms are used interchangeably Moore said that dialogue will always benefit the student's learning. However, an interaction can be neutral or negative. He didn't really expand on that thought. I don't know if anyone has looked into negative interactions in online learning. Clearly this could include peer-to-peer cyber bullying but a student could also perceive an interaction as negative if the teacher gave feedback that the student felt was too critical. I know that I have had classes in the past where I felt that no interaction with the instructor was the best. In my research I have made the assumption that interactions are beneficial but now I think that not all interactions are good.

I thought that Anderson's additions to Moore's three types of interactions were interesting. I have also read that some see student-interface as an interaction. I would also like to add student-parent interaction to the list. Although, I don't know if it has to be a parent. Maybe it could be an influential other. In my coding of the ohsu data I also saw that some parents talk to other parents. I don't know how important that is but if there is teacher-teacher interaction there could also be parent-parent interaction.

I also liked Anderson's summary of Wilson's three functions of a good educational theory. I will have to read that article along with Whetten's article "What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?"

Week 2

"Under no circumstances can students be seen as passive recipients of wisdom conveyed by the medium of distance-teaching course." Is that possible? Holmberg recognizes that some communication needs to be one way and it is not always possible to have a two way conversation about the material. If this case he suggests that materials be created in a way that simulates informal communication. Does that alone make the learner active recipients? I agree that it may help them be more attentive and engaged emotionally but to what degree? He suggests making it personal or "chatty." Does that mean that the instructor should share personal feelings/experiences and humor? I have tried to do this when I create orientation videos for 287. Each week I create a video to help the students become familiar to that week's tasks. In that video I tend to follow many of the concepts of guided didactic conversation. I originally started making the videos this way in an attempt to increase my social/instructor presence in the in the class. This concept seems very close to that of social presence or other concepts of community. Most of what I have read about community contends that people who feel a high level of community are more motivated to be active participants. It is almost combining Moore's thought of content interaction with social presence. Can there be social presence of the author or developer/designer in the course?

I like the concept of developers having empathy for the end users and that they should try to address them as individuals. Write materials as though they are talking to one person. When I teach I am typically also the developer/designer so I am normally thinking about the end users. However, I don't know if that is always the case with developers who will not have direct interaction with the students. I love the concept that the author would think of any time spent on materials as time spent with them.

Trends in DE research

Although distance education is not a new concept, the Internet has forever changed the rules and distance education has enjoyed dramatic growth that shows little signs of slowing. Davies notes that initial distance education research compares distance education to its face-to-face counterpart. Although, this can be seen as "insecurity" I tend to see it as a cautious but necessary first step. When contemplating a large change it is natural to weigh its costs and benefits against that which is already established. Showing that student learning is not significantly different in distance education setting provides the foundation for other research. Similarly, descriptive and case studies are necessary to provide researchers with a snapshot of what distance education looks like. Lee shows that case studies (the green line) are declining which is what you would expect to find. What is a little more surprising to me Experimental research (red line) and theoretical inquiry (blue line) have not increased more.

Davies found a similar trend reporting that case studies tended to decrease while quasi experimental studies tended to stay at similar levels. I also thought that it was interesting how prevalent survey research is in distance education. However, this makes sense because much of the research of distance education would also have to take place at a distance.

I thought that the "Frequency of Cited Primary Author by Journal" table was extremely helpful. Many of the of the top names were absent from my Zotero file. I also identified several articles that I need to read.

Davies found that dissertations tend to rely on survey data. However, I am not sure how much coursework is focused on survey creation. I would love to take a course on the topic if it were offered.