Introduction to Distance Education

Introduction to Distance Education

Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Distance education traditionally has focused on nontraditional students, such as full-time workers and individuals in remote regions who are unable to attend classroom lectures. Distance education, however, is remote and does not include any face-to-face interaction between student and teacher.

Distance education does not include any in-person interaction with an instructor or study peers. Students study at home on their own, and the learning is more individual and varies on speed and timeline according to each individual student and their availability. Because distance education is remote, it can connect students to universities worldwide, making it more accessible for students in different countries. It is also known to be more affordable, which is another factor that helps make education more accessible to many students around the world and in different socio-economic levels.

1. Opportunities for Distance Education

Distance education provides a multitude of opportunities. The first opportunity is the ease of access, for both students and teachers. If courses can be accessed via the internet, it is possible for students to access high-quality materials from all over the world, instead of only their local vicinity. This also gives possibilities to teachers, where they can cooperate with organizations all over the globe and are not limited to local ones. They can also potentially reach a much broader audience for their lectures and can get students from different cultures to interact and participate.

This ease of access also makes it much better possible to combine work and education. If the students don't have to resign from their jobs and move to a university town to access higher education, many more might be tempted to try it out. In addition, it is much easier for teachers to give lessons if they don't have to be physically present at a given location. They can easily integrate the teaching in their day and save time on commute.

Another opportunity is the integration of shy students. If most of the communication is happening semi-anonymous and / or asynchronous, there is likely less hesitancy for students to participate in discussions, as they can take the time to formulate their responses until they are happy and they are not forced to interact at specific times. This can also be of advantage for non-native speakers who can now take the time to make sure their questions and answers are grammatically correct.

Due to its scalability, distance education is also contributing to a lower cost of education. Without the ongoing expenses for locations and equipment, education can potentially be delivered much cheaper. This can then in turn make it better accessible for poorer students.

Distance education can also lead to better inclusiveness in education. Students who could normally not attend classes, for example due to sever social anxiety, health complications, or parental or caregiving demands can use distance education to improve their knowledge.

The main part of distance education, however, is the immense flexibility. Students can choose when, where , and how they lean. They can select the time, place, and medium for their education, and they can work to optimally integrate it in their daily life. Similar advantages go for teachers, who can choose when and where they want to create the materials and how they want to deliver the lectures.

Finally, distance education can also prepare students for the future, as many large corporations and government agencies are relying on distance education to train their employees.

2. Challenges for Distance Education

While distance education allows for new opportunities, it also presents new challenges.

Especially for teachers who have been conducting in-person lectures as their main avenue of teaching in the last years, it might be challenging and complicated to familiarize themselves with the new environment, and to adapt their established teaching styles and teaching materials.

One aspect of this new environment is that it is more difficult for teachers to assess their students' progress. With classical lectures there are much more points to collect feedback from students and to use this to estimate whether the majority of students can follow the presented topics or if some aspects need to be repeated. In distance education, with its more asynchronous teaching style, obtaining such feedback and efficiently incorporating it into the lecture can be difficult. This also makes the identification of low performing much more difficult, as these students might require additional attention. This is not only a problem for teachers. For students, feedback is one of the most meaningful ways to estimate their progress. If the feedback from interaction with the teacher is delayed or missing, students might become uncertain or confused about their learning progress. In addition, this also required more active efforts from the students, which not all might be inclined to make.

Another point to consider is the requirement for stable internet connections. While distance education can allow participation from both teachers and students in remote areas, these remote areas might not always have the required stable and fast access to the internet to efficiently contribute to the lectures. Missing materials and interrupting or stuttering lectures can lead to frustration for both students and teachers.

In addition the use of unknown technologies provides another challenge. Students that are new to online technologies might find them confusing and might need additional education for getting familiar with the tools and how to best use them for learning. Similarly, the online environment can be new for the teachers as well, and they might require additional support from their institution to get an overview on the available tools and how to best utilize and integrate them in their lectures.

Finally, it needs to be noted that not all lectures are suited for distance education and some topics might be easier to teach in classroom settings. This is especially the case when part of the lecture requires access to specialized hardware or laboratory equipment. While these are available on a university campus, it might be difficult or outright impossible to make them accessible to students via distance education.

3. Tips for Distance Education

Likely due to the multitude of challenges, distance education has the stigma of lower education quality than in-person education. However, research found that this is not necessarily true, as long as the distance education is well executed. It can also take some iterations, until the teachers feel comfortable with distance education.

The main focus on distance education should be on creating a learning community and fostering interaction with and between students. Delivering the lectures is only a small part of this.

The online environment also allows to drastically change the flow of lectures. Instead of one long frontal lecture, it can be better to separate the lecture into multiple videos of smaller topics and then create short quizzes to make sure the students sufficiently understand the topics. This helps with assessing their progress, as students get direct feedback on whether they should repeat the lecture, or if they understood it well enough to progress. These short video lectures can either serve as an introduction to a more complex live lecture, or be used as a standalone part of the curriculum.

Another suggestion is to make full use of the digital nature of distance education and to record live lectures to make them also available to students which can not attend them, as well as to allow students to revisit the presented topics at a later point.

The main challenge in distance education is the changed nature of communication between teachers and students. It is therefore especially important to establish reliable ways of communication. This way it can be ensured that students don't miss important announcements and that there is a way for them to get their questions to the lecturers. If a lecture includes live lessons, one way of improving communication could be for the teacher to be available some time before, and after the lecture to talk with students and answer their questions. In addition, lectures should be accompanied by a moodle forum, where students can ask specific questions regarding the teaching materials and other students or the teachers can answer their questions. This way it is also better possible to be aware of students' needs throughout the course. Furthermore, virtual office hours could be established to have a dedicated time each week where students can meet with the teacher and discuss the lecture materials, if the need arises.

Another important part is to foster communication and collaboration between students. In in-person lectures it is often recommended to students to form learning groups to discuss the presented materials among each other and to work together on problem sets. In distance education this should be even more pronounced, as through the lack of interaction in lecture halls students can easily feel lost otherwise.

In addition, many in-person lectures are evaluated via written exams. In distance education, this is much more difficult, as additional complex technical measures need to be taken to ensure that students are not using any unauthorized materials and are working on the exams by themselves. The focus of the evaluation should therefore be less on written exams and focus more on projects. This also helps students by teaching them how to apply their knowledge. Furthermore, projects allow for a larger flexibility of spending time working on the project than a written exam with a fixed date does.

As a recommendation, each course should clarify the following points:

• What topics will be covered?
• How are the topics presented?
  
• What items will each student need?
  
• How is the course graded?
  
• How & where should students share or upload documents?
• What to do if students experience technical issues?
• Deadlines, exam dates, days off, and other special calendar events?
• How to contact you?

4. Teaching Strategies

In distance education different teaching strategies can be used. The following section presents some examples that can be adapted and combined to make new lectures more suitable to an online format. Each of the exemplary teaching strategies is accompanied by a small description, as well as how it supports the teaching process and how it can be implemented. For best success, a combination of different teaching strategies is recommended.

4.1 Live Video Lectures

This format is similar to an in-person lecture, the only difference is that it is not delivered in a lecture hall, but in the form of a video conference. Live lectures make the teachers more accessible for the students and provide an opportunity for interaction between teachers and students. This also helps the teachers to estimate student interest, participation, and learning progress. Online lectures also make it possible to react immediately to specific requests from students, for example if they need additional explanations for some contents. Live video lectures are commonly delivered via standard video conferencing software, such as Zoom, Teams, or others.

For live lectures it is recommended that the teacher opens the session some minutes before the lecture is scheduled to start and closes the session some minutes after the lecture has ended, so students have the opportunity to ask questions. In addition, the lecture should be recorded, so students who were not able to participate in the live lecture do not completely miss it and all students can revisit it at a later point in time to repeat the lecture.

4.2 Recorded Video Lectures

In recorded video lectures, the topics are presented in per-recorded videos. Ideally, each of the topics has its own video and the students know the order in which they should best watch the videos. That way, it enables them to work in their own speed and repeat the lesson as often as they need. It also makes it easier for the teachers, as they have the flexibility to record the lectures whenever they have the time and don't need to schedule a weekly appointment for the live lecture. Recorded video lectures can also easily be reused in different iterations of the course, as long as some effort is made to ensure that the topics are still relevant and up to date.

Recorded video lectures can be delivered in the same form as live lectures, but instead of having the fixed duration, as in universities, they can have variable lengths, depending on the required size to present the topic. If needed, the recording process can also be repeated multiple times, until the final result is of sufficient quality.

4.3 Flipped Classroom

A flipped classroom is a type of blended learning, where students are first introduced to content offline at their own pace and then work through it during a live lecture. This is basically the opposite of a "normal" lecture, where students are presented the materials during the live lecture and then work on assignments on their own. In a flipped classroom, the students engage with the learning materials in their own time to prepare for an active learning experience in the classroom.

This teaching strategy allows the teachers to spend less time on introducing new topics, as they can focus on applications to make sure the students learned the materials well enough on their own. It also allows the creation of more interactive lectures, as students are already familiar with the materials, and the prepared assignments can easily be re-used in different years. Students benefit as well. They can learn on their own speed and develop independent learning skills, and students who are absent do not fall behind as much.

4.4 Live Q&A Session

Live Q&A sessions are live online lectures, where the students prepare and ask questions to the teachers. The main goal of this strategy is to foster interaction between students and teachers. It gives students the opportunity to ask for clarification on the materials presented, and it gives the teachers the opportunity to see if there are parts of the lecture that were not as easily understood as they thought.

As the Q&A session requires active participation from the students, it is important to make them aware of the session and to ask them to prepare questions. To "break the ice", the teacher can prepare some backup questions for the students that focus on the most important points of the curriculum. If students then can not answer these backup questions, it will spark an initial discussion. During the lesson the students should be encouraged to ask further questions.

4.5 Live Quizzes

Live quizzes are quizzes held during a live lecture. They help the teachers evaluate whether the students understood the topic well enough and they also provide feedback to students whether they actually understand the presented subjects as well as they think.

One way to schedule quizzes during lectures is the software socrative. It allows the creation of multiple questions during the course of a lecture, is available as a web-app, and gives students the possibility for anonymous answering of the presented questions. It also provides instant feedback to both teacher and student on the collective answers of the students.

4.6 Offline Assignments, Exercises, and Projects

Offline tasks help reinforcing the materials taught in class and motivate students to get a more complete understanding of the materials. They also provide feedback to the teacher on how engaged students are with the materials.

During distance education, offline tasks can be assigned as group work to improve social interaction between students. Offline assignments can also be part of the final grade, to reduce the need for a big written exam and to get a continuous evaluation of students. This also helps students, as their grades are not the result of one big and stressful exam, but allows them to achieve a good grade by continuously understanding and working on the lecture materials.

5. Implementing Courses in Moodle

Moodle provides multiple different ways to convey lecture contents. Among others, it is possible to create video lectures, book chapters, reading assignments, and quizzes. The complete documentation for moodle can be found on the official moodle website.
However, with the many possibilities offered by the learning management platform, it can also be difficult to find a good starting point for ideas to structure a lecture. To solve this, it is also possible to look at already implemented courses and see how they are structuring their lecture materials, resources, and evaluation. There is also a special Template Course, that provides a good overview of the capabilities of the learning management system, and can be used as an example for course structure.

Further Reading

• Badia, A., Garcia, C., & Meneses, J. (2017). Approaches to teaching online: Exploring factors influencing teachers in a fully online university. British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(6), 1193–1207. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12475
  
• Garcia-Vedrenne, A. E., Orland, C., Ballare, K. M., Shapiro, B., & Wayne, R. K. (2020). Ten strategies for a successful transition to remote learning: Lessons learned with a flipped course. Ecology and Evolution, 10(22), 12620–12634. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6760
  
• Hodges, C. B., Moore, S., Lockee, B. B., Trust, T., & Bond, M. A. (2020). The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/104648
• Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., & Koole, M. (2020). Online University Teaching During and After the Covid-19 Crisis: Refocusing Teacher Presence and Learning Activity. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 923–945. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00155-y
• Ruday, S., & Cassidy, J. (2021). Remote Teaching and Learning in the Middle and High ELA Classroom: Instructional Strategies and Best Practices (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003156338
• Witthauss, G., Padilla, B., Guàrdia, L., & Girona, C. (2016). Next Generation Pedagogy: IDEAS for Online and Blended Higher Education. University Oberta de Catalunya.