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.