Distance Education: Research on Challenges and Possibilities

Learning Through Distance Education

Though once considered a futuristic science-fiction fantasy, distance education courses are quickly becoming commonplace, allowing students to attend courses to receive advanced degrees from the comfort of their homes. In this rapidly progressing field, new advances make online learning environments increasingly similar to traditional, face-to-face classrooms. However, numerous challenges remain for distance education learners, particularly related to how communication is mediated online. In this essay, I will explore some of the major challenges online education learners face, and consider solutions to each challenge in turn. I will argue that distance education courses face limitations in terms of their capacities to provide (a) substantial student support, (b) active, critical thinking opportunities, and (c) deep, interactive engagement among instructors and students. However, I will also demonstrate that there are workable solutions to these challenges, making distance education a strong alternative to classroom teaching.

One of the most obvious differences between distance education and traditional classroom instruction is that there is little or no face-to-face contact in distance education programs. If a student enters the online "classroom" breathless and exhausted from a stressful day, his or her online professor has no way of knowing, unless the student chooses to share. If something is wrong with a student or if a student is facing serious problems in his or her personal life, there is no online counselor the student can see, and the student can feel as if he or she is at the mercy of the professor. Thus, the online environment can be problematic for students facing personal challenges, as student support systems commonly accessible in traditional university settings are generally not available to the distance education learner (he or she may be permitted access to campus services in some cases, but may nonetheless live too far from campus to make this a realistic option). Additionally, it can be difficult for the distance education instructor to take on a supportive role toward students, developing personal relationships that make the educational environment a safer place for students to be themselves.

Such separation from the support networks associated with traditional university life can take its toll on distance education learners. As Galusha notes, distance education students are "more likely to have insecurities about learning" than are traditional students, "founded in personal and school related issues such as financial costs of study, disruption of family life, perceived irrelevance of their studies and lack of support from employers," leading to higher dropout rates (1). Relatedly, Galusha points out "the perceived lack of feedback or contact from the teacher" distance learners face, related to their lacking face-to-face contact (1). Because distance education students are not living in dorms and sharing problems with peers in their living areas, they can easily feel alienated from their peers and their instructor. Family and friends and real life may seem disconnected from the classroom, and the online educator additionally can seem foreign and far away, not related to the student as he or she might be, if they ran into one another in the university halls or campus coffee shop.

Turbill describes this challenge as a lack of "personal contextualising" (7). According to Turbill, personal contextualization is "all the 'small talk' that one expects with face-to-face talk. It usually occurred at the beginning [in traditional classrooms]. However it did not occur initially" in online classrooms, in her experience (7). Turbill has some simple solutions to this problem, such as bridging students across continents in an online environment, as she goes on:

I commented, 'It is pouring here as I write, the wind is blowing a gale and it is cold--well cold to us Aussies' ... My demonstrations of personal contextualising were soon picked up by students on both sides of the Pacific and thus a great deal of small talk had to do with the weather at first. However there was also a lot of discussion about 'babies' as one of the women was pregnant and another happened to fall pregnant during this time. When the baby arrived we had images of mother, father and child sent out for all to see.

It seems there are ways to make the online classroom a personable space over time, and Volery and Lord point out relatedly that comfort with technology prior to class enrollment among students can also help significantly to decrease student isolation at the start of distance education classes (218). However, the lack of real student support online in terms of students' emotional well being and academic development remains a serious challenge for many distance education learners. As Galusha notes, "the lack of support and services such as providing tutors, academic planners and schedulers, and technical assistance," is often overlooked in online environments, to the detriment of students who may also be struggling with social isolation and alienation from academic settings while studying from a distance (2). If distance education programs could develop psychological and academic support networks like those commonly provided to students within traditional academic institutions, retention rates in distance education courses would likely rise (Allen and Seaman 20).

Beyond the issue of provisioning basic support services to students attending distance education classes, students also need to be actively and critically engaged in online classes if they are to benefit as much as they could from within traditional face-to-face classrooms, and challenges with meeting this need can also significantly limit distance education learners. In a traditional classroom, students normally read books and peer-reviewed journal articles accessed from campus bookstores (and, to a lesser degree these days, from online libraries or other storages systems), receive lectures which complement and help explain the materials, and write traditional academic papers. Distance education students, on the other hand, normally access online sources for class content, communicate in online forums which may not encourage the sort of formal academic writing traditional classroom contexts encourage, and may produce websites or web reports rather than traditional academic writings (Beldarrain). However, whether the online environment meets the demands of rigor expected in academic contexts is something many have questioned, and thus likely presents a challenge to learners aiming to acquire academic skills through distance education coursework.

Many people feel that reading online is different from reading from books, for instance. As Warschauer notes, the web is audience-centered, as one can change sites quickly, whereas reading book requires one to focus on an individual editor or author's interest and choices (159). As Burbules and Callister similarly observe, as hypertext grows and evolves, the structure of the information itself changes. Form and content are interdependent ... to the extent that hypertext systems incorporate capacity both to impose patterns of organization on existing information and to facilitate the hypertext user's ability to imagine and create new patterns of organization, hyptertext challenges traditional distinctions between accessing and producing new knowledge. ("Knowledge at the Crossroads").

It is not necessarily the case that one cannot pursue traditional academic studies or research using the internet. However, as Burbules and Callister suggest, one is encouraged to do something different when researching online then going to a library and cross-referencing journal articles. Wikipedia, Google, and other user-friendly tools shape the way people conduct research today.

Distance education researchers and instructors do not necessarily see this change in research norms associated with online learning as a bad thing, however. As Warschauer reflects on his own experience teaching online, a "major benefit of teaching with multimedia networked computers was to introduce students to new types of reading and writing practices that they couldn't get otherwise," which are an important part of professional communication and development in today's world, regardless of traditional academic norms and standards (155). Similarly, Burbules and Callister argue that despites changes in notions of reading, authorship, writing, and so on that occur through using online learning contexts, challenges can be met through careful educator facilitation: making sure students use good websites, and use the web for research is a critical, rigorous way ("Knowledge at the Crossroads").

However, the challenge distance education creates to traditional methods of scholarly reading and researching also hint at changes in educational values that may threaten those invested in traditional academic settings, such as the face-to-face university classroom. As Allen and Seaman note, faculty reluctance to participate in online education programs because they are perceived to be of lesser intellectual quality than traditional programs is one of the biggest barriers to increasing distance education offerings (19). Burbules and Callister ask a question on the minds of many professors when introduced to distance education: "What happens to the college or university when new clients and new constituencies expect and perhaps demand access to intellectual resources and privileges that have traditionally been relatively exclusive, scarce, or costly? The implications of these shifts cannot be over dramatized" ("Universities in Transition").

Burbules and Callister offer their own critical question in response to this, however: "what is being compared here?" They go on, "Auditoriums with a thousand students, faculty lecturing from behind a podium on stage, discussion sections run by earnest but often inexperienced teaching assistants, office hours that afford a brief interview with a preoccupied or impatient professor, are not so clearly superior to their online equivalents" ("Universities in Transition"). It is true that teaching and learning online are different, and that the sources in distance education programs are limited, in some respects, when compared to a trip to the library. However, the engaged professor in either setting aims to facilitate intellectual rigor by guiding their students, ensuring that critical reading, thinking, and writing take place in whichever medium of education.

Finally, there is the question of peer and professor interaction and mutual engagement, which has been touched on in the preceding sections, but which nonetheless can be a problem for students in distance education courses. Classroom discussions cannot happen online the same way they happen in classrooms, with students raising their hands and being called upon by their facilitating teacher...or can they? Though the challenge of interacting and peer engagement has been discussed by many in the field of distance education as one of the largest barriers to widespread implementation of distance education programs by universities (Volery and Lord, Turbill, Galusha, Beldarrain), there are numerous methods and paths through which communication can occur in distance education courses despite the lack of in-person communication opportunities.

Communication among students and instructors is no doubt less rich in some respects in distance education courses, as body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and more are missing from blogs, forum postings, emails, and other online educational spaces. Today, there are many ways to get beyond this challenge, however. Video technologies are increasingly available, which do allow peers and instructors to share facial expressions and body language, often in real-time (Beldarrain). Podcasts and voice transmissions are also now common ways to participate in discussions online, and share information, such as lectures. Some technology even allows students to raise their hands virtually in discussion sessions, making the possibilities for mirroring the traditional classroom online seemingly endless (Harasim).

Thus, communication and interaction among students and instructors is not necessarily challenged online, as today there actually are multiple modes through which distance education learners and instructors can interact and collaborate. As Beldarrain observes, the wiki is one particularly powerful tool often used today in distance education courses to facilitate collaborative online research, writing, and study among students, engaging them in tasks resulting in a group project. He notes that learners at "Bowdain College initiated their own collaborative wiki to share their love of romantic literature and poetry," while other universities "have implemented wikis for building relationships among learners" (142). Similar to a blog but more optimal for group work, possibilities for using wikis for collaborative learning seem endless, as students can do group research projects and more with wikis.

While some feel that distance education programs cannot provide the sense of community among students that traditional settings provide, even this issue is being resolved by those particularly concerned with community implications of online learning spaces. According to Renninger and Shumar, online spaces can become communities when they have the "the multilayered quality of communicative spaces that allows for mingling of different conversations, the linking of conversations ... and the archiving of discussions, information, and the like, that permits social exchange around site resources at a future time" (1). Though far from the image of the traditional classroom, online instructors can thus get beyond limitations to good communication some distance education learners face, by using new technologies effectively to create a classroom community.

Universities and college professors have been using technology for teaching and research more and more over the last few decades, and it has begun to be common practice for student research and student-teacher communication to occur online, through email, even in traditional academic settings. Inevitably distance education has become more convenient and widespread with the evolution of new teaching and learning technologies, as a way to open up education to more and more people. Yet distance education is not without its critics, and I have explored in depth some of the challenges learners in distance education environments face, including a lack of support services associated with the traditional university, challenges for critically thinking and engaging online, and difficulties associated with communicating online more generally.

I have argued here that there are many solutions to most of the problems that have been identified. Perhaps the biggest problem distance education learners face is the lack of support services for those who may feel alone and far from any campus scene. To make distance education work for more students, academic advising and tutoring and emotional support and counseling must be provided as they are in traditional university settings, so that students do not drop out because of personal problems that the program cannot provide support for. The other challenges I have mentioned here--the challenge of critical thinking and reading, and of communicating and interacting with peers and instructors online--are easier challenges to resolve. Educators must take the first step to ensure that their courses are rigorous when relying on resources online, so that students are not simply reading Wikipedia and can produce excellent academic writing. Finally, regarding classroom communication generally, educators can make use of various technology to ensure communication and interaction happen. By using wikis, blogs, forums, pod casts, video or voice lectures, and chat sessions, educators can ensure classroom communication and interaction take place despite distance. The future is bright, therefore, in distance education, even if some challenges remain for online learners.

Works Cited

Allen, I. Elaine, and Jeff Seaman. Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning. Needham, MA: Sloan-C, 2007.

This resource is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and is based on survey data taken from over 2,500 colleges and universities related to the state of online learning. The survey answers questions such as how many students are learning online, where growth in online learning has occurred, why institutions offer online offerings, possibilities for future online enrollment growth, and barriers to the widespread adoption of online education. It is a comprehensive source of information about online education today.

Beldarrain, Yoany. "Distance Education Trends: Integrating New Technologies to Foster Student Interaction and Collaboration." Distance Education 27.2 (2006): 139-153.

This peer-reviewed source considers how new technologies lend themselves to learner-centered constructive education, where student interaction is the focus of lessons. It argues that blogs, wikis, pod casts, and forums all enable student interaction online, and social software applications that may be used are also reviewed. The author concludes that despite limitations to distance education programs, new technologies promote collaboration and aid student learning, making online and distance education a productive future possibility. The source provides a great overview of possibilities for student-centered online learning today.

Burbules, Nicholas C., and Thomas A. Callister, Jr. "Universities in Transition: The Promise and Challenge of New Technologies." Teachers College Record 102.2 (2000): 273-295.

This article, published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Teachers College Record, explores some of the challenges and promises associated with new technologies in university settings, including the possibility of distance education. The authors argue that the term "distance education" is anachronistic as it refers to technologies which may be used in correspondence courses or within in-person settings, such as email and online research and discussion forums. The authors also suggest that using technology is inevitable and discuss challenges and methods in distance education settings. The paper does an excellent job of comparing distance education to traditional academic settings, challenging stereotypes and exploring complexities associated with education and technology.

Burbules, Nicholas C., and Thomas A. Callister, Jr. "Knowledge at the Crossroads: Some Alternative Futures of Hypertext Learning Environments." Educational Theory 54.4 (1996): 45-67.

In this article, published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Educational Theory, the authors consider the educational implications of the use of "hypertext," online text rather than book sources, in education, for both reading and writing. They go onto to consider the use of hyperlinks online, comparing hypertext and hyperlinks to traditional research sources, such as using libraries and books to explores topics of interest. They argue that online environments effect the sense of authorship and how people read, before discussing educational challenges associated with the emergence of hypertext.

Galusha, Jill M. "Barriers to Learning in Distance Education." The Infrastruction Network, infrastruction.com/barriers.htm

In this article, Jill Galusha explores various barriers to learning in distance education programs. She states that distance education programs require greater flexibility on the part of the students, and that lack of face-to-face contact with teachers and peers, technology expenses, and lack of faculty support are serious challenges online students face. Galusha argues nonetheless that distance education programs offer a students control over time, place, and pace, and briefly considers methods to manage the challenges that distance education students often face. She does an excellent job of analyzing learner issues, limitations, and challenges in relation to online education.

Harasim, Linda. "Shift Happens: Online Education as a New Paradigm in Learning." The Internet and Higher Education 3.1-2 (2000): 41-61.

In this peer-reviewed article, an overview of the history of online education is provided, which focuses particularly on higher education and the use of network technologies. It explores "Virtual-U," a website which aims to assist with education online, that is used by hundreds of professors to teach courses to thousands of students. The paper discusses benefits and productive methods of online education and explores future possibilities emerging from the popularity of Virtual-U.

Renninger, K. Ann, and Wesley Shuman. Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace. New York: Cambridge, 2002.

This text explores various aspects of virtual communities in relation to online and distance education. It considers the emergence of online communities, and how to encourage girls to participate in educational and other online environments. The case of educators using the internet for a math forum is considered, and the effects of the internet on local communities is also explored. Various ways to teach online are explored in depth in many chapters, making this an invaluable resource for those interested in the benefits and challenges of online and distance education.

Turbill, Jan. "From Face-to-Face Teaching to Online Distance Education Classes: Some Challenges and Surprises." ASCILITE 2002 Conference at Auckland, New Zealand, December 2002. Ed. Jonathan Cooze. Auckland: ASCILITE, 2002.

In this peer-reviewed conference proceedings, Jan Turbill examines in particular challenges related to educating in an online environment. Taking a narrative form, Turbill reflects on her own resistance and reluctance to teach online. Challenges related to active learning, critical thinking, and language learning online are discussed. Communicating without "nagging" is also mentioned as a challenge, although assessment is deemed to be easier in an online environment. The time it takes to teach online is also explored at length as one challenge or issue distance education teachers face.

Volery, Theierry, and Deborah Lord. "Critical Success Factors in Online Education." International Journal of Educational Management 15.4 (2000): 216-223.

This peer-reviewed article explores ways universities make use of the internet for teaching and learning and the progressive development of online delivery methods. The paper also discusses the results of a survey of students taught through online methods, and identifies the technology used, the instructor, and the student's prior use of technology as significant factors effecting one's success with online learning. The article argues that lecturers are important, but that they become more of facilitators online. This source is clear and conclusive in exploring specific issues in online education.

Warschauer, Mark. Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1999.

This book is based on a study of the use of the internet for language and writing classrooms in Hawaii, and includes rich data from interviews with students and teachers, classroom observations, and student texts. How language, culture, and class shape the influence of online education in diverse settings is centrally considered in the book, and the author argues that the internet and online education can help to educate diverse students about traditional literacy and online literacy, which he regards as crucial for full participation in society today. This book provides a great counterargument to those who argue that online education is lacking when compared to traditional academic education.