Distance education can mean a lot of different things to different people. This chapter will briefly define distance education and briefly overview it. We will then focus on the role standards and objectives usually play in distance education and conclude with how technology can assist the distance educator.

Defining Distance Education

Distance education is education (formal or informal) where a teacher and a learner are separated by space and/or time.

Distance education is not new. Distance education, in the form of correspondence courses, dates to the 1800s. The correspondence course model involved learners completing activities and assignments and sending them (typically via postal mail) to an instructor to grade. The rise of the internet, the World Wide Web, and computer-mediated communication led distance educators to question, rethink, and improve the traditional correspondence model of distance education. More than anything else, these technological advances increased the capacity for interaction. The opportunity for interaction between a teacher and learners, as well as between learners and other learners, distinguishes modern distance education from earlier versions.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, distance educators began to emphasize the role and importance of interaction in distance education. For instance, the California Distance Learning Project (CDLP) in 2005 identified distance education as consisting of the following key features:

1. the [physical] separation of teacher and learner during at least the majority of each instructional process;
2. the use of educational media to unite teacher and learner and carry course content;
3. the provision of two-way communication between teacher, tutor, or educational agency and learner;
4. separation of teacher and learner in space and/or time;
5. volitional control of learning by the student rather than the distance instructor (para. 6)

While definitions of distance education have evolved in some ways since 2005, these five features still capture the defining features of distance education today.

Today, more emphasis is placed on teasing out the nuances under feature one, specifically about when and how students and teachers interact. Traditionally, and in many ways still today, interaction in distance education happened asynchronously—that is, not happening at the same place and time. For instance, students might work on an activity and an assignment and then mail or email it to their instructor. And then, days or even weeks later, the teacher would grade the assignment and often provide some feedback. Even “most online courses today rely predominantly on asynchronous interaction” (Lowenthal et al., 2017). However, over the years, with technological advances, distance educators began interacting synchronously—that is, happening at the same time—with students, whether that be by adding live synchronous sessions using video-based web conferencing or even some face-to-face meetings. These changes in how students and teachers interact began to complicate the distance education landscape in many ways. This led distance educators to differentiate between different variations of distance education (e.g., correspondence courses, fully online courses, hybrid or blended courses) from in-person face-to-face education (whether web-enhanced or not). Table 1 illustrates how one organization defined these different face-to-face and distance education formats. However, it is important to note, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, that there is increased interest, at least at colleges and universities, in adding even more flexibility where students could choose to attend a class one week online in a synchronous format, another week face-to-face, and yet another week asynchronously online, and so forth.

Table 1

Common variations of distance education^[1]

Interaction in Distance Education

From its inception, interaction has been a critical feature of distance education. Early iterations of distance education mainly focused on students interacting with content. However, as distance education and theories of teaching and learning evolved, an increased emphasis and interest began to be placed on other forms of interaction. Michael Moore (1989) identified three common types of interaction in distance education: learner-to-content interaction, learner-to-instructor interaction, and learner-to-learner interaction^[2].

Instructor-to-learner and learner-to-learner interaction may be asynchronous (i.e., delayed or occurring before or after the class period) as in the case of computer-mediated online learning or correspondence programs. It may also be synchronous (e.g., real-time conversations during the distance education class period) with the availability of two-way audio and video technology (e.g., through the use of weekly Zoom meetings). There are benefits to interacting asynchronously as well as synchronously.

Asynchronous instructor-to-learner and learner-to-learner interactions enable instructors and learners to interact when most convenient for them from any location. Most importantly, it allows instructors and learners to think about, reflect on, and take their time to read, respond to one another, and complete any assignments and/or feedback or grading. On the other hand, synchronous interaction allows instructors to replicate many aspects of an in-person, face-to-face educational setting, such as enabling instructors and students to interact in real-time from a distance, often seeing each other. In contrast, they interact, which can help improve timely interaction and social presence, which can then help build an interactive learning community between and among students and the instructor. Advances in technology continue to provide distance educators with different ways to enable instructors and students to interact asynchronously or synchronously.

The emphasis and importance of interaction continue today. For instance, in the United States, there is an emphasis on ensuring regular and substantive interaction, specifically in online courses. In fact, institutions of higher education that receive federal funding cannot offer distance education courses with no or little instructor-to-learner and learner-to-learner interaction. Therefore, when and if you are designing distance education in formal for credit settings, it is essential to think about how learners might interact with each other and how learners and the instructor will interact.

There is a general preference these days to have teachers and students regularly interact with each other and the course content in distance education. Garrison et al. (2000) developed the Community of Inquiry framework in the late 1990s. That framework posits that meaningful education occurs in a Community of Inquiry, including teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Each of those presences aligns with Moore’s (1989) three types of interaction. Simply put, instructor-to-learner and learner-to-instructor interaction can help develop teaching presence, learner-to-learner interaction can help build social presence, and learner-to-content can help develop cognitive presence. For more on the Community of Inquiry framework, visit one of the following websites:

• https://coi.athabascau.ca
• http://www.thecommunityofinquiry.org

However, these popular models or approaches of highly interactive and collaborative forms of distance education are just one type of distance education. For instance, there are a lot of variations of self-paced distance education (e.g., self-paced eLearning training courses or self-paced Massive Open Online Courses). Anderson (2003), one of the original creators of the Community of Inquiry, later developed the interaction equivalency theorem, in which he argued that as long as any one of the three types of interaction that Moore (1989) identified (i.e., learner-to-learner, learner-to-instructor, or learner-to-content interaction) is of high quality, then the others can be reduced or eliminated without lowering the learning experience. Therefore, while it is often ideal to get a group of learners together and have them experience regular and substantive interaction with each other and the instructor, effective distance education can still be created, focusing on only one or two types of interaction.

Technology in Distance Education

Most types of distance education today use technology in some way to facilitate the learning experience. The array of “low tech” to “high tech” technologies available today allows distance educators to identify the best tools available to meet the needs of students/learners and address the standards or learning objectives. The terms “low tech” and “high tech” technologies usually refer to the levels of immediate interactivity possible using these technologies. What follows is a brief discussion of some of the technologies available for teaching at a distance.

Distance Education Using Low-Level Technology

An early means of providing learning at a distance was via correspondence study. This text-based communication system between educator and student provided an occasion for an individualized form of distance learning. Students would receive printed materials from the instructor, read them, complete the assigned tasks or activities, and return the completed materials for grading, typically at their own pace. After reviewing a student’s work, the instructor might give the student a grade (with or without feedback), return the materials for corrections, prepare a test, or forward the next stage of instruction to the student.

Technological advances over time (e.g., with audio and video) enabled distance education to move beyond only using text-based materials. Students could listen to the radio or, later, view television broadcasts for the instructional portion of the lesson and then complete any assignments that needed to be sent to the instructor for grading and/or feedback. Radio and television are still used in developing countries and some rural areas and have seen a resurgence in some places due to COVID-19.

As the cost to record audio and video decreased, distance educators began sending audio and videotapes, and later CD-ROMS and DVDs, with print-based materials for students to use at home. This improved correspondence study since the student and instructor were not bound to a specified broadcast time for any audio or video component of the instruction. Also, the student could review the lesson repeatedly since the media permitted the student control over the material.

Because of its low cost and the many materials already prepared in this format, correspondence study is still used today worldwide. Students with time constraints or topics that do not require audio or video for instruction are good candidates for this low-tech approach to distance learning. This is also a good option when there might not be consistent internet available.

Correspondence study can and often is enhanced by placing materials on a website or blog (e.g., Google Sites or WordPress) or in a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or Moodle, which we discuss in more detail below under high-level technologies. Technology-supported correspondence study like this is still considered low-level because it tends to take a one-way, individual, and ultimately low-level technological and pedagogical approach to distance education.

Distance Education Using Medium-Level Technology

Advances in telecommunications enabled distance educators to allow multiple users from various locations to talk to each other over a single telephone connection, often referred to today as a conference call. Teleconferencing is a low-cost way to add interaction to distance education. Any visuals necessary for the lesson can be distributed in advance (e.g., via postal mail, email, or downloaded from an LMS) and used at each site during the conversation. The supplementary materials, though, need to be well organized so that participants can be guided through the materials easily and ideally accessible by the learners before the start of the meeting. These are minor problems when weighed against the enrichment of a live, two-way connection.

Today, the Internet and accompanying web conferencing applications have replaced teleconferencing in most places. Students can now log onto an application like Zoom, Webex, or Google Meet (on a smartphone or a computer), where audio and video transmissions allow live, two-way interactions among the participants. The signal quality has significantly improved with advances in computer-based technologies. Web conferencing applications today often include additional features such as a “whiteboard” where all the participants can contribute to an online writing space, polling, and breakout rooms--as well as the additional ability to record the meetings so that those unable to attend can watch later.

Many educators turned to web conferencing to hold live synchronous meetings when they were forced to teach remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic because the technology was readily available, relatively easy to use, and did not require too much planning or rethinking what they usually did in class. In other words, they could continue having class at a particular time and place by having students log in to the web conferencing application.

Distance Education Using High-Level Technology

Advances in personal computing, the internet, and educational and communication technologies have drastically changed distance education. It is now possible to use a computer or a cell phone to connect people and resources worldwide in ways many of us could not imagine a decade ago.

Distance education using high-level technologies essentially refers to efforts made by institutions and organizations to provide distance education at an enterprise level. So, while popular LMSs offer free versions of their software (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle are currently available), these free versions are often limited and must be better suited to provide distance education at scale. Instead, when institutions and organizations are interested in providing distance education at scale, they usually license some type of enterprise-level LMS that will enable them to manage enrollments and accounts at scale, utilize various features of the LMS (e.g., asynchronous discussion boards, chat/messaging, announcements, quiz/testing, grade book), and integrate and combine other high-level technologies such as ePortfolios, asynchronous video (e.g., VoiceThread, Flipgrid), virtual worlds, publisher materials, and even a library.

Table 2

Low- to High-Tech Technologies 

Whether one is using low-tech, medium-tech, or high-tech technologies (or some combination of the three), instructors and students now have a multitude of ways to communicate one-on-one or many-to-many to help improve the interaction in distance education (see Table 3). Technological advances will continue to provide educators with new ways to interact with learners; however, the key is to let one’s instructional goal or objective, not the technology, guide one’s instructional decisions.

Table 3

Common Educational Technologies 

Objectives or Standards in Distance Education

Clear, understandable, and measurable objectives or standards, aligned with appropriate assessments, are the foundation of high-quality education. This is because they help educators focus on what they want students to know and be able to do and determine later if their instruction was effective. Depending on one’s situation, you might have the freedom and flexibility to create your own course objectives, or you might be in a situation where you need to align your instruction to existing course and/or program-level objectives or standards.

Standards come in many forms. There are national, state, and district standards, as well as content or industry-level standards. The Common Core [ http://www.corestandards.org ] are perhaps some of the most famous standards at the K-12 level in the United States. The Common Core Standards are essentially a set of common content standards that were developed to align and provide consistency across different states in the United States. Distance educators need to be aware of any standards used to align their instruction.

Finding Standards

There are many places where educators can look for standards. Some places to look include:

1. State and district standards: State departments of education are good places to check for state standards, while district comprehensive school improvement plans can provide local guidance.
2. National standards documents: These documents are produced by professional organizations such as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) or content specific such as nursing (The American Nurses Association (ANA) Scope of Practice https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/scope-of-practice/). They contain helpful information about requisite knowledge and skills.
3. External Standards Studies: Studies that have attempted to synthesize national and state standards documents.
4. Curriculum Director: An individual who should have access to pertinent standards documents.

Once you have identified the standards you will use, the next step is to write meaningful objectives to guide your curriculum development. In many cases, though, you might not have any external standards to guide your curriculum development. In situations like that, distance educators must develop their own program and/or course objectives to guide their curriculum development. Often, this is done by answering the question: “At the end of this program or course, what should learners know and be able to do?”

Understanding Standards

Understanding standards takes some time. They are written broadly, with indicators or benchmarks provided for further clarification. Standards are found in several different formats:

1. Content Standards in traditional subject areas: These generally serve as the core of the curriculum, depicting essential knowledge and skills in different subject areas (e.g., the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards^[3]; the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards for human resources management^[4]).
2. General reasoning skills standards: Typically, reasoning skills (e.g., problem-solving or decision-making) are included in most standards sets.
3. General behavior in the world of work: Managing time effectively or learning that promotes teamwork, character, and student responsibility is needed to do well in school and work. However, they are seldom addressed in subject standards, but they are often found in school improvement plans.
   
   

Writing Measurable Objectives

Different educational systems require objectives to be written in different formats. However, the basic components of a well-written objective are: audience (learner), behavior (what you want them to perform), conditions (any restrictions or aids provided), and degree of accuracy (the level at which they perform to be considered acceptable for the objective). Some refer to this as the ABCD of objective writing. Keep in mind, though, that not all objectives must contain all components and not necessarily in the ABCD order.

As previously stated, objectives are written statements describing what task you want your students to perform. To create a well-written objective, you want to be sure it is clearly written in specific terms and not too general that it becomes vague to interpret. First, make sure it is from the learner's perspective and not the instructor’s perspective. In other words, what is it the learner should accomplish at the end of the learning activity? Not what the instructor needs to do to help the learner perform (that would be an instructional strategy). Perhaps the single most crucial part of an objective is the measurable verb. What will learning and success look like? Thus, verbs like “understand” or “learn” are usually not specific enough in an objective. The real question is, how will you know if a student understands something? What does understanding look like? Some even like to work with frameworks like Bloom’s taxonomy (Marzano & Kendall, 2008) to help not only classify the levels of thinking of their objectives but also to identify good measurable verbs for their objectives. In fact, there are many lists of action/measurable verbs on the internet for you to utilize.

Chapter Summary

So now that you’ve chosen your technology (low to high), the standards your course needs to meet, and written the objectives for your learners, you need to design the distance learning experience.