Home

About Us

Advertise

Services/Samples

SurfingThroughNoise

Subscribe

Return to Archives
Return to Article Summaries

April 2002, Vol. 1, Issue 4
 
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EFFECTIVE DISTANCE-EDUCATION COURSES?

Some of the short answers to this question include having sufficient resources and obtaining course development funding (Kasta and Matkin); managing growth and scale (Heeger); finding an effective funding scheme (Oaks); meeting the learning needs of your audience (Magid); distinguishing yourself from much of the poor, reputation-damaging distance education that’s available on the web today (Almeda and Finney); and developing and funding effective marketing strategies, which was the most prevalent response.

Finney: There’s one category of challenge that has to do with students’ perceptions of online education. It has to do with people really coming to believe that they can take a course online, and it can be very valuable to them - not just as a credential but as a learning experience. So we spend a lot of time thinking about what is our philosophy of education and how do we embody that in our online courses . . . We try to develop our courses in ways that are highly interactive, using several different techniques. . . I think a lot of people assume that you just put these courses online, and you go out and you sell them. What we have learned is that you put these courses online, and you go out and you first have a conversation with people about the idea that effective education can occur online, and they can do this on their own time and their own schedule, and it will be a valuable experience for them. It’s not necessarily true for everybody. We are selling a particular approach to online education here. It doesn’t take you very long on the web to discover there are a million and one courses; many of them are text only that lead to nothing in terms of significant learning. So talking about education online versus sitting down and learning something on a screen is a conversation that we have begun to have here because there are a lot of skeptics out there. And they have justifiable skepticism given all the junk that is online. So first we try to say we have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and despite the bad experiences you might have had, you should take a look at this because you will find that this is something different. So it’s almost a two-step process versus just saying this is what we have.

Oaks: It is certainly a challenge to help faculty move beyond a traditional way of teaching to something in an online environment that is pedagogically sound. We have good course designers and good models for course development, but it is a big change for many faculty, and I think it is a challenge for them and for us. I think we have been successful at it, but it is a challenge.

Return to Archives
Return to Article Summaries


Copyright. All rights reserved. Lorenzo Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 74, Clarence Center, NY 14032.