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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. |
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