Distance Education: Lessons Learned

Half of my workload today remains in the traditional classroom. The remainder is through distance learning. Both methods work, and as difficult as it is to admit, I have reason to believe that the students who complete my distance learning course may actually have learned more. I am now convinced that it is possible to offer a college-level course effectively through non-traditional means.

My distance education course in American History is divided into two parts. One semester covers the period through the American Civil War. The second part covers from Reconstruction to the present. Students learn the material by studying a core text that offers a chronological telling of American history and a supplementary text that examines major historic turning points. In addition, students either view lectures I have videotaped or participate in debates through computer conferencing. They also learn history by visiting places of historical significance within the region. Student learning is evaluated through my exams administrated on campus in a testing lab, or overseen by a responsible proctor, and through submission of between five and nine written projects.

There are several conclusions about distance education that I wish to share.

Many students come to distance learning with the expectation that they have discovered a short cut. They are mistaken. Rather, they have merely found an alternative route. I like the analogy of trying to drive from the Virginia side of the District of Columbia to the Maryland side. To do this, one might drive across Washington where the pace is regulated by traffic lights and stop signs. Or one can drive around the Capital beltway, where there certainly are no traffic lights and apparently no speed limits. One may actually get there more quickly on the beltway, but to do so will require driving farther and faster. With both routes, however, the destination remains the same. And whether instruction takes place within a classroom or outside of it, the student must master the course material.

A television commercial sponsored by the dairy industry a few years ago made an interesting observation. It pointed out that while every margarine manufacturer claimed its product tasted just like real butter, no dairy had ever bragged that its butter tasted just like real margarine. Instead of trying to maximize its similarities to the traditional classroom, distance education should be proud of its differences and build upon them. Distance education will be no more successful in imitating the classroom than margarine has been in imitating butter. It can come close, but it can never be the same.

The traditional classroom constrained by walls has limits to the kind of learning it can host. Distance learning takes place wherever the student happens to be. It is wrong to refer to distance learning as a "home study" program. The community is the classroom, one filled with learning opportunities far beyond anything a traditional classroom could offer.

I provide my students with a list of close to 80 projects that take them to community resources. For example, they can tour the homes of great Americans such as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the Lee family’s Stratford Hall, Babe Ruth’s Birthplace Museum in Baltimore, or Frederick Douglass’ home in Anacostia. They can visit the B & O Railroad Museum in Maryland, study the locks and other engineering feats of the C & O Canal, or take a look at the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution through the Smithsonian’s "Engines of Change" exhibit. They can tour the old Supreme Court Chambers within the Capitol Building and then hear arguments before the Court in today’s chambers. They can sit in on a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Along the headwaters of the York River, they can visit the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Reservations. They can visit Jamestown where the English colonial period began and then travel across the peninsula to Yorktown to see where it ended.

They can hike the route of Pickett’s Charge up Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg or take the tour of the battlefields at New Market, Antietam, Manassas, or Fredericksburg. They can visit Fort Frederick of the French and Indian War, Fort Washington, built following the War of 1812, or the Union’s outpost in Alexandria, Fort Ward.

Students can read a newspaper published on any date in the past from cover to cover and discuss its format, contents, sources, and biases while comparing it to a paper of today. Local libraries often have old papers dating back to the colonial era. The Library of Congress has an incomparable collection of such publications.

The students must watch video lectures as part of the course requirements. But their role is not simply to view these lectures on history. They must identify their theses and outline them. This not only helps them to assess the relative importance of points within the lectures, but it also provides evidence that they have actually viewed them.

Videotape offers possibilities unavailable to classroom presentation. It is a tragedy not to take advantage of them. When I first taped lectures for televised courses more than a decade ago, I did so from a studio, standing in front of a dark blue curtain. The only item visible besides me and the blue curtain was an artificial rubber tree. My lecture was broadcast at the same time as Miami Vice. It took me years to knock Don Johnson out of my time slot.

While mode of teaching college courses has remained the same for the past 600 years, it will not stay this way much longer. Technologies, existing and future, will alter the way in which people learn. Economic concerns will tip the balance increasingly away from campus-based instruction to distance learning as legislatures struggle to finance the escalating costs of modern society.

Distance learning can experiment with the new technologies to see which can be applied successfully. My course uses, among other technologies, a system of computer conferencing. This is an attempt to build interaction into distance courses, a weakness at present. For each of 14 controversial topics from American history, I offer students 84 provocative questions. They add their comments to an on-going debate through their home computers or through terminals provided on campus.

My course guide, my handouts, and my lectures incorporate humor where possible. The projects I offer for students most often are pleasant outings, as well as educational experiences. It is common for my students to take friends and family with them for the excursions.

A good number of the projects combine the excitement of discovery with research that entertains. Students can go to the Library of Congress and read about the discoveries of life on the moon in the 1835 issues of the New York Sun or trace the efforts of northern Virginia officials and Pawnee Bill to track down a herd of escaped elephants in 1906.

Distance education will assume an increasingly more prominent role in higher learning in the decades ahead. It will never replace the classroom, but it will provide an alternative path that an ever-expanding number of students will follow as they pursue college studies. Virginia, and particularly Virginia’s community colleges, should play a leading role in this field. Distance education is still in its developmental stages. We can shape it. And we should design this future educational medium with our first thoughts being about the quality and effectiveness of learning rather the needs of finances or administration.

Using television, computers, and other technologies, both traditional and emerging, we could make Virginia the model for all to emulate and capture the field for ourselves before proprietary schools and cable companies take control of it. To take the lead in this field is to expand the way we serve our students. It can improve the way our students learn and broaden their opportunities for learning. Using distance education, every college can offer every course in the state curriculum guide every semester, a worthwhile goal.

I once thought distance learning was inappropriate, perhaps even ineffective, as a means of teaching college courses. I am convinced that distance learning is a vital part of the future of higher education. Not only will distance learning teach students effectively, its techniques will help reshape the traditional classroom-based instruction. It is imperative that in this formative period, the development of distance education be in the hands of educators whose concern is for the quality of learning.