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.