Week 7 - Distance Education

In response to the E Learning Article:

There is little difference between face to face and distance learning achievements.

I took OAC Calculus via correspondence, and although the course was not online.. I feel I have an interesting point to share. I was pretty good at math in high school but I had to work really really really hard at it because it never came easily to me. When I hit OAC calculus...... it was way over my head. I dropped the course (which was my first time ever!) before the drop date because I didn't want my under 40% mark to show up on my high school transcript.

Being an athlete I always thought I'd want to take the kinesiology route.... which I finally realized while struggling with OAC Chemistry as well... miiiiiiight not be the right choice for me. Regardless, I wanted to get my OAC calculus credit because I wanted to keep my options open. I decided to take the course through correspondence and found that I had all of a sudden become in charge of teaching myself how to do calculus......

In the end, I wound up being able to sort through the material on my own better than I could when I was instructed by my teacher. To make a long story short... I think that learning achievements is totally based on who is teaching, and how the information is being presented; there needs to be a variety of ways something can be learned (or at least explained) in order for a larger amount of people to understand it.

Students indicate a slightly higher level of satisfaction with live course settings than distance education formats.

For this I want to compare my thoughts on blog writing vs. class discussion. Although I do love writing, I find that it takes more motivation to write something down then it does to just talk about it. Writing the blog for this class was sometimes difficult (as you can tell by my nice October to December lull...) because when I leave the classroom I'm not in the moment or in the discussion; it takes a lot more effort to regain the focus and concentration to write the blog than it does to have a discussion in class. I feel that motivating oneself to fully engage in distance education might be the same way because for the most part I think it would be self explored and there wouldn't be the discussion or ideas of others to generate ideas or even to continue the progression and growth of those ideas. When you're in class you're surrounded by a group of people that are processing the same thoughts and concepts that you are and you can build off of them to make new ideas.

Some learners felt that online material gave them extra work.

I am sometimes overwhelmed with some of the material that's mediated online. When I log into my e mail account sometimes there is a pile of e mails about things that have been added to the Moodle, and then when I log on to the Moodle to look at the material that was added in support of the things we talked about in class there are links to pages of numerous essays about the topic..... although I love trees and don't necessarily agree with a big giant coursepack of readings, I prefer the "read and learn this" mode to support material vs. the "flip through this and pick out what you want" model. I'm obviously over exaggerating with my example, but sometimes I get a little anxious about all the things that are there and feel like I have to read it all because the stuff I don't read will all end up on the exam or on the text etc. and I won't know any of it.

Everyday activities getting in the way of formal education.

For this reason.......... I think that online and distance education is great. I understand that every person has multiple responsibilities in their life and that sometimes education has to take a back seat: this is hard when you're a full time student. As a full time student it's hard for some to understand how work or other obligations can keep you from being in class all the time or completing every assignment without extensions. Although I have managed to get this far in my university career with only one extension to my name, I definitely am not always in class and I sometimes felt bad about it. It was only up until this year when I realized that school is only part of my life that I stopped feeling bad about missing class. ... to pay tuition and the rest of your bills sometimes you have to pick up an extra shift at work to miss class, or sometimes things are out of your hands.... you wake up and the car won't start etc. etc. For this reason, learning at your own pace, on your own time, could be really helpful for people with even more things on their plate than me!