partial draft of a future publication from the U.S. Department
of Education;
please do not circulate or cite
Developing a Vision for Distance Education in the 21st Century
An Introduction
Over the last decade the advancement of technologies and school reform efforts, as well as other factors, have paved the way for the rapid evolution of the field of distance education. Distance education has great potential to help to shape the restructuring of education in the United States. It can work hand in hand with reform efforts to create learning opportunities for all learners, at any locale, at any time. Learning is not and need not be tied to specific places at specific times. Telecommunications is a vehicle for providing educational opportunities to meet the increasing needs in our diverse society for high quality, lifelong learning. It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to develop a vision of distance education in the 21st century which supports high-quality educational opportunities for all members of our society, and takes into consideration all of the needs and resources which must be brought to bear on this arena to accomplish our vision.
Knowing this, the Office of Educational Reform and Improvement brought together leaders in the field of distance education and related industries, to begin to articulate a vision of distance education in the 21st century and strategies for how to accomplish it. Developing a Vision for Distance Education in the 21st Century was begun to provide background to the participants of this Distance Education Forum held in March of 1997. After the Forum, the authors included the thoughts of participants and other contributors, and developed this version of the paper. Developing a Vision for Distance Education in the 21st Century is divided into four sections. The first traces the evolution of distance education over the last decade. The second describes the emerging vision of distance education. The third reviews critical issues, barriers and facilitators for reaching that vision. And, the fourth is a call to action, describing the essential building blocks needed to reach the vision described here. Hopefully, Developing a Vision for Distance Education in the 21st Century, will be a catalyst for continuing the national dialogue about our vision and the steps necessary to reach it.
Part 1:: Distance Education: Its Evolution During the Last Decade
Introduction
The field of distance education has changed since its initial form as correspondence courses was created over a century ago. In addition to those programs, new programs using print-based independent study courses, radio and television, and now computer and desktop conferencing have evolved. The advances in technologies, especially in the last decade, provided the impetus for new forms of distance education to evolve to meet other specific needs and purposes. All of these forms of distance education are valuable, meeting particular purposes for which they were designed and utilizing the available technologies. Part 1 traces the evolution of the field of distance education over the last decade into a dynamic environment, due to the convergence of five major forces. Its uses have grown to include the more traditional need of providing unavailable resources to learners at a distance, to that of supporting and promoting school reform through the creation of distributed learning environments to provide lifelong learning opportunities.
Distance Education: An Evolving Field
Traditionally, the terms "Distance Education" or "Distance Learning" were applied interchangeably to a great variety of programs, providers, audiences, and media, with the commonality being the separation of teacher and learner in space and/or time (Perraton, 1988), and noncontiguous communication between student and teacher, mediated by print or some form of technology (Keegan, 1986; Garrison and Shale, 1987). In 1995, the Council of Chief State School Officers, under a cooperative agreement with The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce, issued the report: "United States Education and Instruction through Telecommunications: Distance Learning for All Learners." The working definition for distance learning as stated in that report was: "the delivery of video, voice, or text instruction or information to a learner over a distance, from one location to another using some form of telecommunications technology." Recognizing that there are still many important needs being met through distance education programs which do not use advanced technologies, this paper focuses on the evolution of distance education programs which have and will use rapidly advancing forms of telecommunications technologies.
Forces in the Evolution of Distance Education
Over the last decade, five major forces have played a part in the evolution of the vision, design and implementation of distance education programs:
1. The use of live, interactive television for distance education, via satellite, broadcast television, cable, and ITFS.
2. The development affordability, greater access to, and integration of technologies for distance education purposes.
3. The educational reform efforts emphasizing: richer and more meaningful curriculum; higher standards of performance for our schools, teachers, and students; and pedagogies to increase the success of all students, with a focus on those who have been traditionally underserved.
4. The exploration and new understanding about how to design distance education programs for learners of all ages, backgrounds, and needs.
5. Ten years of continued Federal involvement to pilot, sustain and evaluate a variety of distance education programs to add to the understanding of the field.
Because of these factors, distance education programs have expanded dramatically and have evolved along the following dimensions:
* their purposes or intents
* the technologies, media, and types of interactivity employed in synchronous and asynchronous modes
* the content
* the learning paradigm - approach and pedagogy employed
* the locus of control of learning, with students becoming responsible for and guiding their own learning
* the numbers of learners served at a variety of access points or educational settings
Evolution of Distance Education over the Last Decade
Television is a powerful, pervasive and compelling medium in our society. And, used in a live interactive mode, it has brought that power to distance education. Because of its pervasiveness, learners of all ages can access distance education programs in their homes and in educational, community, and institutional settings. Because of its familiarity to teachers and students and its ease of use, it becomes a transparent teaching tool. And, the magic of live, interactive television "personalizes" distance education. "She knows me," a child exclaimed of a satellite teacher. "She was talking right to me..." (Naiman, 1992).
When the Star Schools Program began, a decade ago, one major form of distance education was the one-way video satellite transmission of full courses. This form of distance learning developed out of a purpose to provide access to coursework unavailable at a particular site, often for rural high schools, and often for advanced students. In many instances the coursework was necessary to: fulfill certain high school, post-secondary, or continuing education requirements; address lifelong learning needs; continue professional development; or, obtain corporate or military training. This form of distance education typically used someone at the site to facilitate the coursework, as instructors for those subjects were not available. One of the issues that early producers and users faced was the accreditation of the distance learning instructor across state and district lines. This continues to be an issue with some secondary and university coursework offered through this form of distance education. We have seen this form of distance education develop into virtual high schools and universities, corporate distance learning models, and sophisticated distance learning networks for military training.
During the last decade, distance education programs evolved to meet a variety of purposes, including supplementing instruction to support school reform. These programs provided sequential content and pedagogy related to national frameworks and standards, and were designed so that the distance learning instructor could model effective practices for the classroom teacher. This form of distance education involved the classroom teacher as an integral part of the student programs, as well as for pre- and post-telecast activities. Many of these programs were designed for elementary and middle school students, with accompanying staff development for their teachers. The programs developed new distance education designs to provide quality learning opportunities to and greater equity and access for students who had been traditionally underserved.
During this time, with the evolution of and greater access to more advanced technologies, the focus of distance education moved to asynchronous, interactive modes of assisting the learning process, such as intelligent tutoring, access to resources via the Internet, and interaction between students at different sites. This evolution moves the locus of control of learning to the learner. This evolution has influenced both of the forms of distance education described above.
As an example, some distance education programs may continue to focus on the traditional purpose of providing otherwise unavailable coursework, but they have evolved along other dimensions, including the technologies used and interactivity employed, and the locus of control of learning. In many cases, this model of distance education may be characterized as centralized in its operations and resources, with point to multi-point distribution. Over the last decade, although still a centralized model, it has evolved to greater interactivity, from one-way video to one-way video and two-way audio, to two-way video and two-way audio, to incorporation of computer networking, support materials and other interactive capabilities. It currently utilizes most technologies: video and audio via satellite, broadcast, cable, Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS), video conferencing; audio via telephone; and, data via computer and fax.
This form of distance education, which includes increased interactivity and use of multiple technologies, continues to provide great benefits for learners of all ages who are limited by time, geography, disabilities, or other access issues, to give them greater access to necessary coursework. It has a global impact, as it provides all learners with additional educational choices and opportunities, especially since we are preparing a generation facing a global economy. Mathis, a contributor to this paper, emphasizes:
"Today's students will be required to offer a more international approach to their problem solving. Effective experiences with distance learning will be invaluable in encouraging our students to see themselves as members of increasingly diverse communities. "
The global impact of distance education is also seen its potentially important contribution to overcoming barriers to women's participation in the developed and, particularly, the developing world. What Trivedi wrote in 1989 continues to be true today:
"Distance education has a very important role in women's development. Women have constraints of time, space, resources and socio-economic disabilities. Distance education can help them with its outreach to their homes. It enables them to learn at their own pace and take up vocations and skills for economic and individual development. It gives them a second chance to step into the main systems of education, including higher education, enabling them at the same time to earn and learn as well as to fulfilling family responsibilities."
School Reform, Constructivism and Distance Education
Many school reform efforts have set the stage for the use of constructivist and inquiry approaches for learning, and the need for students to develop abilities to access, evaluate and use information. Educators and technologists looked to distance learning technologies to provide avenues and support for these approaches. Dede and Resnick provide us with two related perspectives.
Christopher Dede said:
"New technologies can help transform schools--but only if they are used to support new models of teaching and learning....The best role for technology is to make community-centered constructivist classrooms sustainable for the teachers."
And, in "The Transformation of Distance Education to Distributed Learning" (April, 1996), he said:
"Conventional distance education is similar to traditional classroom instruction, save that it uses technology-based delivery systems. In contrast, emerging forms of distributed learning are reconceptualizing education's mission, clients, process, and content; this new instructional paradigm is based both on shifts in what learners need to be prepared for the future and on new capabilities in the pedagogical repertoire of teachers. Four new forms of expression are shaping the emergence of distributed learning as a new pedagogical model:
* knowledge webs complement teacher, texts, libraries, and archives as sources of information;
* interactions in virtual communities complement face-to-face relationships in classrooms;
* experiences in synthetic environments extend learning-by-doing in real world settings;
* sensory immersion helps learners grasp reality through illusion."
Resnick (1996) provided this description of Distributed Constructionism in a paper published in the Proceeding of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences:
"Constructionism (Papert, 1993) is both a theory of learning and a strategy for education. Constructionism is based on two types of 'construction.' First, it asserts that learning is an active process, in which people actively construct knowledge from their experiences in the world. People don't get ideas; they make them. (This idea is based on the constructivist theories of Jean Piaget.) To this, constructionism adds the idea that people construct new knowledge with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally-meaningful products. They might be constructing sand castles, poems, LEGO machines (Resnick, 1994), or computer programs (Harel, 1991; Kafai, 1995). What's important is that they are actively engaged in creating something that is meaningful to themselves or to others around them.
Distributed constructionism extends constructionist theory, focusing specifically on situations in which more than one person is involved in the design and construction activities. It draws on recent research in 'distributed cognition' (Salomon, 1994), recognizing that cognition and intelligence are not properties of an individual person but rather arise from interactions of a person with the surrounding environment (including other people and artifacts). Recent research projects have attempted to use computer networks to facilitate the development of 'knowledge-building communities' (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991), in which groups of people collectively construct and extend knowledge. In many of these projects, students share ideas, theories, and experimental results with one another. Distributed constructionism asserts that a particularly effective way for knowledge-building communities to form and grow is through collaborative activities that involve not just the exchange of information but the design and construction of meaningful artifacts. Computer networks can be used to support distributed construction activities in several different ways: Discussing Constructions; Sharing Constructions; Collaborating on Constructions"
Interactive, distance-distributed learning is a use of technology which supports constructionist pedagogy and school reform. It provides opportunities for students and teachers to collaborate in and out of the classroom to become part of learning communities, to utilize information from voice, text, graphic, television-video sources, and the Internet to develop information literacy skills, and to construct, and apply knowledge.
School Reform, Global Networks and Distance Education
As part of school reform efforts, educators developed new pedagogical approaches to ensure the educational success of children of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Again educators looked toward distance learning technologies to provide avenues for and support of these pedagogical approaches.
In Brave New Schools: Challenging Cultural Illiteracy through Global Learning Networks (1995). Jim Cummins and Dennis Sayers described Transformative Pedagogy (based in part on the work of Paolo Friere) and what it looks like in action -- as global networking.
"Transformative Pedagogy moves beyond progressive pedagogies, including constructivism, to also consider larger social realities. Transformative pedagogy uses collaborative critical inquiry to relate curriculum content to students' individual and collective experience and to analyze broader social issues relevant to their lives. Students discuss and find ways in which those social realities might be transformed through various forms of democratic participation and social action. Intercultural interactions which are at the heart of global networking illustrate transformative pedagogy at work."
"We argue that such partnerships (global learning networks) can promote academic development across a broad spectrum of content and skill areas, including literary skills development, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving in such vital domains as science and social studies, citizenship and global education, and second-language learning. They also stimulate students' research skills and promote sensitivity to other cultural perspectives."
Brave New Schools is rich with portraits of the Transformative learning experiences students have been involved with through global learning networks, such as connections between: schools from other countries with a refugee camp in Savudrija, Croatia; classes in Maine and Quebec City; schools in New York and San Francisco to confront interethnic prejudice; schools in the Orillas International Proverb Project to conduct folklore investigations.
In a recent issue of Educational Leadership (November 1996) is a story of how Chinese limited English proficient students gained cultural connections, increased academic competence, improved language skills and enhanced their self esteem through accessing the global Internet. The class worked toward these three goals:
1. By using a Chinese translation software program within minutes students would be able to translate any English materials into Chinese.
2. With the help of the translation program, a subscription to America On-Line, and a digitized writing pad, students would be able to use e-mail in Chinese to do research and to communicate with others who speak Chinese.
3. Students would be able to produce their computer projects or electronic portfolios in Chinese.
Students developed pen pals from Hong Kong, Singapore, England, the United States and mainland China. While they most often selected pen pals in their age group, they also communicated with scientists and other academics. Because most of their pen pals expected them to be good English tutors, they became highly motivated to learn. Soon they became the first to conduct a live-chat in Chinese through America On-Line. They became the subjects of news stories by Chinese newspapers as well as contacted by universities and other organizations for advice on telecommunications in Chinese. This compelling story is illustrative of how distance education can help to reframe education to assure that lived experiences, language and cultural identities can be vehicles for critical inquiry and generative collaboration.
A different kind of global networking can provide new staff development support for teachers.
"The Hawaii Network for Education in Science and Technology (HI-NEST) is an international computer network designed to support the implementation and use of the Foundational Approaches in Science Teaching (FAST) program. FAST is an exemplary middle-school science program developed by the Curriculum Research and Development Group (CRDG) of the University of Hawaii which has been adopted by schools in 36 states, the Virgin Islands, Pohnpei, Kosrac, Australia, Japan, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Jakarta, and Budapest. Over 500,000 students are taught by over 5,000 FAST teachers. HI-Nest provides a new and powerful tool to assist teachers in implementing the program more effectively in their classrooms by providing continuing follow-up services as they adapt new teaching strategies. HI-NEST addresses the topical, social, and technical issues identified in other research projects as barriers to effective use of telecommunications networks. Topical problems are addressed through the use of a common science program among all usersèSocial issues are addressed through direct familiarity of teachers with the instructors they know and trust and through relevant and timely support in implementation. Technical issues are addressed through face-to-face training of participants in the FAST teacher institutes and providing accurate and responsive help on-line and by phone. The project provides a variety of follow-up support services including a HI-NEST moderator who is responsible for energizing, guiding, and monitoring activities." (Southworth and Young, 1993)
Ten Years of Federal Involvement in Distance Education
The Star Schools Program Contributions
The original intent of the Star Schools Program was to increase foreign language, mathematics, and science course offerings for K-12 students. Over time, the intent and reach of the Star Schools Program have expanded dramatically, and educators' awareness and perceptions of how distance education can be used have increased as well. The Star Schools Program, funded through the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, at the U. S. Department of Education, has made four major contributions to the field of distance education over the last decade.
1. Star Schools has provided "just-in-time" instructional and training programs to learners of all ages which would have been otherwise unavailable to them.
2. Star Schools has developed distance education models which can be used by a wide variety of learners, including underserved populations, destroying the commonly held view that distance education was only appropriate for high school advanced placement students and post-secondary students.
3. Star Schools has developed distance education professional development models which are supportive of school reform efforts.
4. Star Schools has created a greater readiness for providing and using distance education as a vehicle for greater access and equity to educational resources.
Star Schools Program and distance education have provided access to a broad and deep array of curricular resources for learners of all ages across the entire geographic/demographic spectrum. These resources include the overall technologies, curricular offerings, and pedagogical approaches, all of which would have been unavailable to these learners without Star Schools. Star Schools projects have successfully served students of all ages, of all races and ethnicities, with a broad range of subject matter, including: students helping students via distance learning in critical areas of health, literacy, and decision-making; migrant students using distance learning to maintain continuity in instruction as they move from one area to another.
In addition, we have seen the development of distance education staff development models combining the use of student programming and programs specifically for teachers as integral parts of a long-term reform-centered sequential staff development program, with evaluation results showing changes in teacher behavior and increased student outcomes, in mathematics, science and other subject areas. (Lane, 1994).
Professional development through Star Schools has included explicit professional training for teachers offered through the technologies, as well as implicit role modeling provided through exemplary Star Schools teachers' approaches and suggested strategies.
Besides providing untold numbers of otherwise unavailable learning opportunities to learners of all ages over the last ten years, the Star Schools Program has created a greater national and local readiness and capacity to provide and use distance learning. It has enabled us to learn more about the kinds of distance learning programs students, teachers, and parents find valuable, how to initiate successful programs, and how to help teachers adopt and adapt these programs. For example, Drexler (1996), in evaluating one Star Schools project, identified a number of factors that facilitated successful project implementation efforts. The more of these factors present in a site, the greater the likelihood that the site was able to involve the numbers of people needed to develop a robust project using the multiple technologies and resources available through Star Schools. The presence or absence of these factors or characteristics can influence the success of any reform effort employing distance learning technologies
Factors Facilitating Successful Project Implementation Efforts
* The site had some familiarity with technology at the outset
* The site had used innovative and/or student-centered teaching-learning approaches at the outset.
* At least one person on site was available for technical troubleshooting.
* Staff had access to others to share ideas, problems and solutions with are able to move forward quickly.
* The site worked collaboratively with other organizations.
* There was a commitment on the part of the site administration to support technology use.
* Staff saw a long-range benefit to using technology in their programs
* Staff had opportunities and time to interact with programs and materials to determine how and where they fit best into their ongoing curricular programs.
* Staff had the opportunity to see specific examples of how to integrate new technologies into the curriculum and the time to model new teaching-learning strategies into their own situations.
* The site had some familiarity with technology at the outset.
* The site had used innovative and/or student-centered teaching-learning approaches at the outset.
* At least one person on site was available for technical troubleshooting.
* Staff had access to others to share ideas, problems and solutions with are able to move forward quickly.
* The site worked collaboratively with other organizations.
* Site administrators were committed to support technology use.
* Staff saw a long-range benefit to using technology in their programs
* Staff had the opportunity and time to interact with programs and materials to determine how and where they fit best into their ongoing curricular programs.
* Staff had the opportunity to see specific examples of how to integrate new technologies into the curriculum and the time to model new teaching-learning strategies into their own situations.
Other Federal Agency Involvement
A number of Federal initiatives in addition to the Star Schools Program have supported the development and use of distance education, including the following (Saloman 1996):
Department of Commerce
National Telecommunicatons and Information Administration
* National Endowment for Children's Educational Television
* Public Telecommunications Facilities Program
* Telecommunication and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program
Department of Education
* Ready to Learn Television
* Improvement of Academic, Library, Educational Television and Radio Facilities
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
* Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (ITA)
* NASA Satellite Videoconferences
* NASA Select Television; NASA SpaceLink
* The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS)
National Endowment for the Arts
* Radio/Audio Art
* Programming in the Arts
* The Arts of Television; ArtsEdge
National Endowment for the Humanities
* Humanities Project in Media
* Instructional Technology Projects: Teaching with Technologies
National Science Foundation
* Networking & Research Infrastructur
Two national studies have provided critical information for understanding teachers' use of technology and issues related to technology innovation and school reform. Summaries of those studies follow.
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), in its 1995 report, "Teachers & Technology: Making the Connection", examined the relationship between technology implementation and teachers. The report indicated that in 1995, although American schools had one computer for every nine students, and 41% of all teachers had televisions in their classrooms, the majority of teachers felt "inadequately trained" to use technology resources. Teachers struggle to find the time and means to integrate technology resources into their curriculum, yet this curriculum integration is vital for technology to become an effective resource. Teachers need to see a vision of the potential and variety of uses of technology in their classroom and in the education reform effort. OTA found that distance education could be particularly valuable for teacher training and professional development by providing exemplary pedagogical models and approaches.
"The National Study of Technology and Education Reform" (Means & Olson, 1993) has looked at some of the barriers and facilitators surrounding technology innovation and school reform. These findings point to the great need for professional development for staff, including technical assistance, and time structured for collaborative activities between staff members, in order for teachers to feel ownership to the innovations. They also point to the need for communications with and support from people inside and outside of the school in order for staff to begin, and to continue to develop innovative technology programs. This is important as we look ahead to strategies for moving distance education into the future. A summary of the main findings of this report follows this section.
Barriers and Facilitators Surrounding Technology Innovation and School Reform
From "The National Study of Technology and Education Reform" (Means & Olson, 1993)
1. Authentic, challenging tasks are best supported with flexible technology applications rather than canned instructional programs.
2. Schools should have project-based, cooperative teaching and learning skills in place.
3. Technology implementation can be a safe context that allows teachers to become learners again and share ideas about curriculum and method.
4. Teachers need time to develop their own technological skills.
5. Easy access to technical assistance is critical, especially in the early years.
6. Technological innovations are more effective when teachers feel ownership.
7. Schools need permission and support for innovation from the district, state, and federal levels of the education system.
8. Innovative programs need to build a constituency of supporters and should not expect to show dramatic effects on standardized test scores in the short term.
Part 2: Our Vision for The Next Millennium
Distance Education, an Integral Part of
Distributed Multi-Media Learning Environments
Introduction
What are our hopes for our "schools" and education in the 21st century? What role does technology and distance education play? Participants at the Distance Education Forum in March 1997 reflected on these critical questions, built on the vision of others and began to describe their view of what the future can and needs to hold.
Beginning to Build the Vision
In his Keynote Address, "Sowing The Seeds For The Year 2020," at the 1995 Department of Education Technology Conference, David Thornburg assumed the persona of a time traveler from the year 2020, reporting to the citizens of 1995 on the long-term impact of their current decisions about educational technology.
Thornburg said: "One good decision was to link technology with school reform. You started teaching using multiple learning styles, a democratic structure, integrated curricula, and decentralized learning. You broke out of the 2 x 4 x 6 idea: we've been burdened by two covers, by four walls, by six periods."
He envisioned children in the year 2020 doing much of their learning in the field, addressing real-world concerns, conducting hands-on projects, and using a variety of interactive tools. In this environment, teachers become "co-learners, guides and facilitators." The children's museums of 1995 offer prototypes for this approach to learning.
He told of an imaginary Nobel prize winner in the 21st century whose interest in science was kindled through an Internet-based NASA Spacelink project in 1994. He said: "What brought her into science was her ability to get the same information that the scientists did. She's in one of your classes in one of your states as a fourth grader right now; it's by nurturing her interests now that she will discover microbial life forms in another solar system in 2019."
Finally, he said, the citizens of 1995 were astute enough to understand that while Internet access is essential, education involves much more than access to advanced tools. "You realized that the job in your century was to help students find the wisdom in information, find the light in living, and . . . the meaning in the depth of a 500-channel democracy."
Furthering the Development of the Vision
At the Distance Education Forum, participants were asked to imagine themselves becoming time-travelers, going into the Year 2015, and reporting to each other what they find then in terms of "distance education". Here is what they reported finding. In 2015, distance education is integrated into new learning environments housed in a variety of "schools," community agencies, libraries, museums and homes. The term distance education is no longer used, because it is an integral part of the new learning environments, which are characterized by distributed onsite and distant multi-media resources integrated throughout the learning environment and the learning process.
The learning technologies are ubiquitous, highly interactive, transparent, easy to use and affordable, and as there has been public and private support and partnerships for low cost equitable infrastructure and access, traditional schools have been able to evolve into new flexible structures to serve the needs of diverse populations for lifelong learning. Offering a different structure for learning, the new learning environments move beyond the four static walls of a classroom or school to provide authentic learning contexts, whether that be through a school to work model with business mentoring/shadowing, or through engaging whole families together in global learning activities.
In the new learning environments the technology itself is far more transparent and user-friendly. The possible means for distance interaction have increased and distinctions between different forms of educational telecommunications have fallen away. Questions such as "Does distance education mean the Internet or videoconferencing or satellite downlink?" are irrelevant. Distance education encompasses all of the above, and more, simultaneously. New wireless bandwidth services help to blur any distinctions
As the learning community moves beyond the classroom walls, it is not confined to the classroom schedule. It is no longer age-based or time-based. At the same time, there is an ongoing need for an educational establishment, even though it has a new footprint, different than that of the 20th century. The new educational establishment provides for "quality control" and assures certain learning standards are met. Goals for students are performance-based, with students achieving particular curricular standards. 20th century schools were designed to develop variability in achievement among students within a fixed time period. A bell curve of high, middle, and low learner achievement within a static semester, or one hour class period, was what was expected. In contrast, 21st century education reverses this instructional paradigm to fixed achievement or performance within a variable time period. All students are held to the same standard of performance or achievement, but the amount of time and pathways to reach that standard of performance varies from learner to learner.
Many boundaries disappear in the new learning environments, including those between individuals and groups which had been defined by: geography; time; locations of school, home, community, and work; age; language; culture; and established learning communities. Lifelong learning, the individualization of education and the development of new learning communities are all supported by the new learning environments of the 21st century. Distance education and technology offer unique opportunities for learner control that allow individualization to occur readily, and for education to take place in locations most related to the developmental levels and needs of the learners. Individualizing education and the development of learning communities are both important. While it may seem that the development of individualized education and learning communities are contradictory concepts, with distance education as an integral part of the new learning environment, they are compatible and interwoven.
The technology allows for learner control and therefore individualization. It also encourages the development of authentic learning communities. A cluster environment within a school setting provides a developmentally-appropriate learning community for younger learners. At the same time, the access distance education affords enables these young learners opportunities for specialized, individualized learning. It also enables many opportunities for families to learn together, which is frequently difficult when children are separated from their families by the walls of the classroom and school. At the high school level, in using a school to work internship model, for example, students learn what they need and at their own unique pace through distance education, while at the same time becoming part of the larger learning community of the workplace. If we consider adult and life-long learning, with business television networks, the model moves from school to work into school at work.
Our goals for student learning focus increasingly on a global cultural understanding as learners prepare to become global citizens. For example, students in an American city communicate electronically with "trading partners" in China. Through working on real-life simulations, they learn the language of business, commerce, and trade customs, and through these aspects, learn the culture of their trading partners as well.
Participants at the Distance Learning Forum summarized their vision of distance education and the new learning environments of the 21st century in the following ways.
Vision
Live, interactive audio/video/software, integrated into curricula, serving as a key element in providing learners of all ages, cultures and backgrounds with the tools to achieve and become successful, contributing members of society.
Purpose
To address the needs of various diverse and isolated populations, including needs of racial, cultural, linguistic groups and rural populations.
Overarching
Distance learning will be reframed as an integral part of learning at large, in order to provide more customized, individualized and, life-long learning, and to erase boundaries between K-12 education and learning communities
Instruction
Instruction is student-centered, collaborative global learning, with learners engaged through technologies, and with teachers taking on the role of facilitators.
Curriculum
Students will take responsibility for their own learning, defining their own learning agendas, and using resource centers, with assessment embedded in the curriculum.
Technology
Technology will be characterized by the use of multiple and user friendly integrated technologies, with greater portability, functioning beyond today's connectivity, with standards for interface which do not necessitate individuals knowing software protocol.
Environment
There will be no boundaries to learning communities as the "invisible" technology provides teachable moments, with the entire environment supporting constructivist, non-linear learning.
Support
Support is characterized by community and parental involvement, pre-service and inservice teacher training, dissemination of exemplary practices, and facilitative policies. Stakeholders buy-in, accept standards and are comfortable with technology, are able to troubleshoot for themselves.
Krebs, a Distance Learning Forum participant, envisioned the technologies of distance education in the future and how it will affect education in the following way.
"Distance Education will be offered on a variety of media platforms and using both wired and wireless telecommunications systems to deliver content directly to students in schools, libraries, museums and arts and cultural organizations, and at home and worksites. Computers, the Internet, CD-ROM, DVD (and other optical storage devices) will form part of the mix of classroom media as well as TV, WebTV, DBS, CableTV and two-way interactive networks....Distance learning will involve more international applications. In higher and continuing education, distance learning will continue to reach adult learners at worksites and at home through a rich mix of media, including desktop videoconferencing and media on demand."
Lake, a Forum participant, provided this view of the future:
"The field of distance education is evolving very rapidly into a 'distributed learning' system. Distance education delivery systems are converging to accommodate this pattern. Thus, cable companies and regional phone companies are acquiring internet service providers, broadband television stations are planning to deliver interactive programs, and wireless cable and ITFS support last-mile satellite connections into schools.
From the perspective of the end user, students and teachers in schools and parents in the home, the delivery systems will rapidly become transparent in the 21st century. Even today, when teachers turn on the television set, they don't know or care that the signal may have been carried from satellite to cable headend or from fiber to cable before it reaches the classroom.
Distance education will provide the learner with multiple access points to knowledge using a single system. Teachers and students won't need to access computers for asynchronous applications, and then cross the room to turn on the TV for a synchronous, live or videotape experience. A touchtone keypad will permit them to control multiple access points for voice, full motion video and graphics/ data.
The last decade of the Twentieth Century witnessed the rapid installation of the connectivity infrastructure into many schools and districts. However, access, at least to individual classrooms, will continue to be a problem well into the next century. Highend computers will continue to decline in price, but multiple installations into schools will still be beyond the reach of many districts without significant support from the private sector. Digital Web TV, which integrates full motion video with online applications, may replace the computer as the user friendly 'black box' of choice for the classroom teacher.
Sophisticated technical training for teachers will not be an issue in the 21st Century, because the industry will rapidly make the infrastructure easy to use. However, software training and professional development on the appropriate use and availability of curriculum content on the highway will increase dramatically. Staff development in the 21st century won't focus upon how to use the equipment (this will be done through user friendly software tutorials) but will focus on how the distributed learning system available to teachers can be effectively integrated into their lesson planning to raise standards and improve instruction."
Solomon, also a Distance Education Forum participant, offered the following concept of "schooling" in the future:
"As a result of distance learning technologies, schooling will be taking place in various locations other than the traditional schoolhouse and classroom and by individuals other than the traditional certified teacher. Since technology may render geography and distance less relevant, students will be involved in customized learning rather than follow the traditional factory model. Schooling will be agile where students use distance learning technologies to learn specialized skills not generally available at the local school site.
Students in traditional classrooms will attend 'classes' or in small groups where the teachers are experts from museums and cultural institutions world-wide. A class on archeology would originate from a world-class museum with expert archeologists and anthropologists leading the learning. Students will attend 'classes' where business and industry leaders lead the lesson direct from the business site. The locus of learning will change as a result of distance learning technologies.
Students will also attend 'classes' outside of the traditional schoolhouse such as at a museum, factory, or place of business. Distance learning will provide students a broad range of instruction so as to maximize the customized instructional program of each student.
Students will participate in learning activities beyond the traditional school day. Since distance learning technologies cross time zones, flexibility of scheduling will become normal in the global educational program. Students in the United States will study 'alongside' their international counterparts. These learning teams will consist of students working together at hours and locations that are mutually convenient. This international learning team will have some students involved in activities in the evening hours while the time for their global counterparts might be a morning hour.
Since distance learning technologies will bring students together from various nations, students in the United States will be multi-lingual, similar to their now international counterparts who speak several different languages. Schools will have introduced the study of languages in the pre-school and early grades and students will begin sharing experiences with their global counterparts at an early age forging new international friendships and eventual business contacts. The study of cultures will become a necessity of human interrelationships as 'multiculturalism' expands into the daily course of activities.
Universities will become involved in offering courses to students and expand their role in the traditional K-12 environment.
Teacher accreditation will be radically different with some individuals obtaining accreditation providing certification in all states, while other 'teachers' will have less stringent certification requirements as the differentiated staffing roles evolve as a result of distance learning technologies.
School Administration will become more consolidated as schools and school districts realize economies of scale with respect to buying consortia, health insurance and associated Human Resources activities.
The school librarian will become the facilitator of the information highway in the school -- the information retrieval specialists -- assisting students, faculty and parents in locating information in the explosively expanded electronic format. With the expansion of electronic media, there will be an expansion of print media. School libraries will become technology zones where the librarian/ information specialist will assist students in the 'paperless' term papers using all media including the written element, video and audio. The vast archives of the world will require that the librarian/information retrieval specialists expand their portfolio to service students and staff as the library/technology zone now has an international reach.
In higher education, the concept of 'campus' will be significantly changed. At the graduate level, distance learning will place the graduate student in the position of taking a degree and courses from any institution globally. There will be a major restructuring of graduate education as individuals use distance learning technologies to take "courses" and modules from noted experts in specific fields. Similarly for undergraduate education, there will be significant changes. The last quarter-century has seen the increase of consortia colleges and universities recognizing credits from their associated schools. Distance learning technologies will have a major impact on consortia with students customizing courses from universities nationally and globally. The 'campus' of today will be radically altered in 2015. 'Local' instructors may serve more in the role of co-teachers or teaching assistants and more nationally recognized 'professors' will convene 'courses' and oversee research. Distance Learning technologies will introduce new players into the degree granting arena such as museums, business and cultural institutions by, initially, joining with universities in a consortial role and, ultimately, obtaining degree granting status independent of university affiliation."
Part 3: Realizing the Vision for Distance Education:
Critical Issues, Barriers and Facilitators
Introduction
In Part 3, we align the vision for distance education presented in this paper with the realities into which this vision must fit. First, the four goals of the Federal Technology Literacy Challenge are presented, along with the role and contribution of distance education in reaching as well as moving above and beyond these goals. Next, critical issues surrounding the social context in which distance education exists are addressed. Finally, we identify barriers and facilitators that can influence the success and speed of distance education implementation efforts in the future.
Technology Literacy Challenge
President Clinton and Vice President Gore have a strong belief in the power of technology to address many of these educational issues. The Technology Literacy Challenge, with the following four goals, reflects their belief in that power:
1. All teachers in the nation will have the training and support they need to help students learn using computers and the information superhighway.
2. All teachers will have modern multi-media computers in their classrooms.
3. Every classroom will be connected to the information superhighway.
4. Effective software and on-line learning resources will be an integral part of every school's curriculum.
Distance Education and Its Contribution to Achieving the Four Goals
According to Miller,
"Virtual education IS the core of the national plan, but we must take care to think beyond Internet -- to consider interactive video, fax, wireless communication, and satellite as all tools in the same tool kit."
In considering this broad perspective for the goals, Krebs describes how distance education can play a role in achieving each of the goals:
Goal 1: All teachers in the nation will have the training and support they need to help students learn using computers and the information superhighway.
Distance learning can assist teachers in gaining technology literacy and in incorporating technology effectively in their teaching and classrooms, by providing master teachers to help train the new generation of pre-service as well as in-service educators.
Goal 2: All teachers will have modern multi-media computers in their classrooms.
Multimedia computers with modems can only be successful if educators have adequate display media (i.e. large screen monitors) to use for online instruction as they demonstrate learning activities to their students. Distance learning can provide the impetus for this equipment by continuing to offer content rich learning activities and resources.
Goal 3: Every classroom will be connected to the information superhighway.
Classroom connectivity should be considered in the broadest sense of the term, through both wired and wireless communications. The information superhighway should also be considered in the broadest sense of the term, not just for Internet access, but for access to video resources via TV broadcasting over wired and wireless transmission systems.
Goal 4: Effective software and on-line learning resources will be an integral part of every school's curriculum.
Distance learning networks and educators continue to offer among the most innovative curricula resources for all content areas. With funding from both federal and state departments of education, and from federal agencies such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), National Education Association (NEA) schools and other educational consortia, such as museums, libraries, arts organizations, can be linked for both local and national educational activities."
Distance Education Beyond the Four Goals
Many distance educators believe the goals should be expanded explicitly:
* to think of the information superhighway as encompassing all forms of distance education
* to think beyond the traditional concept of the classrooms and schools to a much larger arena for learning
* to guarantee equity of access for all learners, whether in school or out of school
* to train parents, others, and teachers to use resources effectively
* to have computer access points in homes, community centers and schools
Lake writes:
"Distance education transcends the President's emphasis upon computers and information highway by providing a whole range of instructional experiences that can be live, interactive or videotape. Distributed education, as we envision it, is an effective convergence of technologies which ultimately will support extensive resources as well as opportunities for student hands-on applications in the classroom."
Krebs elaborated further on the expansion of distance learning:
"Distance learning should help adult learners attain ESL (English-As-A-Second-Language) skills, literacy skills, GED (high school Graduate Equivalency Diploma), professional development, training. In other words, the schools should be envisioned as the community resource centers, offering after-school hour activities for the community at large. The concept of schooling will shift from the current model of time and place in one location to a model of time and space in many and varied locations."
Distance education can bridge cultural gaps, language barriers, and generations to unite communities outside of the traditional learning environments. And this bridge will be increasingly critical in our society.
Critical Issues as Distance Education Evolves
A variety of societal factors will shape the educational world as we move into the 21st century. Rapid scientific and technological discoveries and advances, the resulting emergence of a new technology-based and technology-driven work life, a highly mobile and diverse population, and a potential teacher shortage as a predominantly older teaching force retires, all bring new challenges to the educational arena.
How will new teachers be trained to meet the needs of our schools? How will experienced teachers keep current when technologies change almost daily, when national borders and global economics change almost as rapidly? How and what should students learn so they can acquire the skills and knowledge to adapt to the ever-changing requirements of the labor market, the knowledge explosion, and global citizenship? How can we provide equitable access to both formal and informal educational opportunities when our population is so mobile, when our children may be isolated from these opportunitieson rural farms, in migrant camps, or in urban high-rise housing projects?
Equity and Access
Taira (1997) described the following disturbing trends in equity and access:
"Central to the distance education dialogue is the critical focus on equity and access to technology and quality uses of it. The United States Department of Education's 1996 report on technology and education states that while seven percent of classrooms have connection to the Internet, schools in affluent communities are more likely to have access to the Internet than schools in economically poorer communities. In the 1996 Quality Educational Data study, it was determined that low income students have low access, students of color have less and Hispanic students have the least access. Computer ownership in homes falls exactly the same way; it is highly skewed toward middle and upper middle class white households with the rural poor households having the least percentage of computers. This demonstrates a serious gap that needs to be addressed in order for students of color, language minority students and economically poor students to have equity of access to these powerful learning tools which can result in increased learning and academic achievement for all students.
Once underserved, marginalized students have access to computer technology an equally alarming critical disparity is how computers are used in schools primarily populated with students of color (limited to teaching of basic skills with remedial software programs) as contrasted with schools with predominantly white populations (likely to use computers to teach higher order literacy and cognitive skills).
Each week, news articles report promises the state or federal government is making about placing computers in the classrooms. But the appropriate school-wide planning and implementation of new conceptual models of teaching and learning are essential. These models need to include the racial, cultural and linguistic needs of all students. Otherwise, the technology is underused, overused or misused. A pedagogically sound approach is a necessary foundation for using technology to liberate the learners. In the process, professional development is a primary focus."
We hope to prevent the "underuse, overuse, or misuse" of technology in theeducational reform effort.
Infrastructure
Schatz, a contributor to this paper describes critical issues related to the educational telecommunications infrastructure.
"While assessment of needs, development of content, professional development support and other critical elements of any effective distance learning strategy continue to move forward, we are still hampered in sharing the resulting resources of those efforts locally, regionally, statewide, nationally and internationally by the lack of appropriate educational telecommunications infrastructure that will support the quantity of quality of applications that are required by the educational community.
If we are to look to the public switched network capabilities to support the needed infrastructure for high as well as low bandwidth educational video, voice, and data solutions, we must develop a community-based approach if there is any hope of achieving affordable and quality solutions. We must develop partnerships within local communities not only for the development and use of content, but also for the development of the needed infrastructure. Without guaranteed revenues for the use of their facilities (which most states or specific educational institutions can not provide), it is difficult for telecommunications companies to build the needed business case within their own organizations to make the large capital investments required for expanded infrastructure development. This is especially true in the more rural areas of the country where the costs for infrastructure development are high, the numbers of users are low, and yet the need for these additional infrastructure developments are perhaps the greatest. If we are to successfully address the issues of equity, this becomes an even higher priority in a successful national strategy.
In order to create successful solutions with the telecommunications industry, K-12 schools must build successful partnerships and work collectively with libraries, community colleges, universities, business and industry, health case providers, and others on a regional, statewide, and multistate level to aggregate the demand of these users which, in turn, will assist with the development of the business case that will cause the marketplace to develop and maintain the needed infrastructure.
All too often, educational institutions have been forced to use business videoconferencing solutions which are not ideally suited to the multi-media needs of the teaching and learning process. We must work together to define our needs, aggregate our demand for services, and provide flexible technological solutions that are based on the needs of the users. But, we must work with the providers to help build the business case. The needed infrastructure development most likely will not happen for a single school in a particular geographic area. However, the combined needs of the schools, community college, libraries, universities and other users as stated above can provide the impetus to create the equitable, quality and affordable solutions which will move the country forward in the ability to share its educational resources.. Today's technological solutions will depend upon the dynamic allocation of bandwidth required for any particular application."
Other Critical Issues
Mathis describes these issues we face in moving toward the vision of distance education in the 21st century:
" Blended Technology -- The key to the viability and long term direction of distributed learning will be the evolution of products and services that blend the various components currently available. There is no single innovation that transforms the classroom. To the extent we get that message to vendors as well as to the end user, we will see technology become the "tool" we know it to be.
Costs -- Having financial resources to bear the cost for quality distance learning programs will continue to be critical to the development and ongoing stability of the initiative.
Broadening the Application -- Getting all schools (urban as well as rural) to use distance learning as a tool to enhance the curriculum and expand horizons will be key to the future of these programs. It will be difficult to sustain funding and a robust growth pattern if distance learning is perceived to assist a limited population.
Dissemination of Information and Assistance -- We need more effective ways to get the information about what works and what doesn't work to the end user.
Content Development -- We need more effective partnerships with the business community in order to ensure continuous quality product development. Without strong content, classrooms will not embrace the application on a long term basis.
Legal and Standards Issues -- Copyright, standards of content in distance learning, and licensure of staff are critical issues to the future of distance learning. Regardless of the position that is ultimately taken on these topics, the key seems to be that the issue is at least dealt with.
Acceptance and Integration of Distance Learning -- Collaboration between school and home will be key to the acceptance and integration of distance learning. We need to harness the power of distance learning to more effectively involve parents in the education of their children.
Feedback from Schools -- It is critical that we listen to the schools themselves. So much of the current discussion is top down. There are extensive discussions about technology focusing on what schools need, what teachers need, what students need. At this point, schools are not driving the development. When schools begin to initiate program development, we will have turned the corner on technology integration."
In looking at all of these critical issues and how change occurs in schools, there will be both barriers and facilitating factors in instituting school reform and the integration of technologies. Some of these factors are relevant primarily to distance education and technology efforts.
Barriers to Distance Education Efforts
Michael Fullan in Overcoming Barriers to Educational Change (1992) agreed with the need to focus on professional development:
"The foremost thing we have learned, which seems obvious but is usually misunderstood, is that change stands or falls on the motivation and skills of teachers."
He also identified the following barriers to change which can be addressed to make change efforts more successful.
Barriers to Change
1. Overload
Schools are attempting to cope with too many innovations simultaneously, caused by too many pressing needs and a political system that generates more innovations than can be managed.
2. Complexity
Initiators of change underestimate how complex serious change is, both in its effect on individuals and its unclear nature at times.
3. (In)Compatibility
Concerns the philosophical compatibility of a reform with the personal philosophy of the educators involved.
4. (Lack of) Capability
There is a need to build capacity in the people and the organization to develop the skills and knowledge to implement the change.
5. (Limited) Resources
Change will not occur without the necessary resources to build capacity and provide the human and material infrastructure that is necessary to support it.
6. Poor Change Strategies
Are the change strategies being employed addressing the five areas above?"
Drexler, in identifying barriers in a Star School project, writes:
"All sites, including those high implementing schools and organizations, identified several factors that inhibited implementation efforts. These factors included time, resources, and scheduling. More time was needed by participating staff, more staff resources such as ongoing technical support were needed. . . .Participants needed intensive hands-on training and support."
While the above constraints apply to most wide scale reform efforts, distance education poses an additional cost factor. The costs of increased, equitable access to distance education resources can be high.
Solomon cautions:
"Since there are costs associated with access, those students who attend schools with budgets sufficient to provide necessary access will gain an edge over those students with budgets unable to bear the full costs of access.... As access to information becomes access to an education, then cost will create classes of students based on ability to pay for access. Access will become an issue for all forms of education: k-12, higher education, lifelong learning, business education, etc."
On-going operating costs are a major barrier for many schools. Distance education networks have frequently not become institutionalized. Overdependence on grants and short term money frequently results in program reductions or network failure when funding ends. The transfer from analog to digital satellite systems will be difficult for schools.
While important to determine the cost of a distance education program, it is equally important to determine the lost opportunity of not having the educational benefits of the distance learning initiative. Lost opportunities represent opportunity costs to be factored into the educational decision-making process.
Facilitators to Distance Education Efforts
Barriers and facilitators are two sides of the same coin. As educators address the barriers cited in the previous section, these same factors can become facilitators to change. In addition, distance education has some unique characteristics that can serve as facilitators to its continued growth. These include the following:
* There is a public demand for cost-effective programs that address high standards for learning. If distance education can be perceived as an important vehicle for equity of access and the achievement of high standards for all students it will thrive and prosper.
* The on-line 'bandwagon' is a significant factor and satellite delivery systems can design hybrid learning systems which support the four goals.
* Continued development of new media platforms (such as WebTV, desktop video), telecommunications transmission systems, and content rich software will spark the inclusion of distance education as a common educational activity in classrooms.
* Distance education pratictioners now span every segment of the educational community from K-12 to higher, and continuing educatiion, and workplace learning.
* The cost effective use of distance education can become an integral part of the delivery of educational services.
* Increased access to affordable telecommunication and other delivery systems will allow greater use of distance education in the future.
The critical mass of distance educators and those experiencing the value of distance education is growing. These practitioners need to involve policymakers, administrators, teachers, and the community in understanding the full range of activities currently underway and in advocating for future growth and a true national policy. An action-oriented research agenda can help all of use understand and shape the potential of distance education for true reform.
Part 4: Realizing the Vision: A Call to Action!
Introduction
How can we as educators, policymakers, and citizens shape the future of distance education? First, we remind ourselves to focus our vision for distance education on the needs of 21st century learners, and, therefore, also focus it on the concomitant needs for professional development for educational staffs. To support these needs, we outline a proactive research agenda which asks questions that address the role(s), potential, uses, and outcomes of distance education in the education reform effort, as well as throughout society. Our answer to the questions will help drive a vision to a reality. Finally, the paper concludes with policy implications for educators, business, and the federal government to strengthen the appropriate development and uses of distance education in the 21st century.
Moving Forward
At the Distance Education Forum, participants concluded that in order to move ahead, we must understand the needs of 21st century learners, and how distance education can support them and the educational staffs of the future. This conclusion and extensive study of educational futures, school change, the role of technology in school reform, and the development and use of distributed multimedia environments, provide us with the basis for an action agenda. First, Ramirez (1997), through his study of educational futures, presents us with a clear picture of the needs of the 21st century learner. Fullan (1992) identifies strategies necessary to realize school-based educational change. Means & Olson (1993) point to the needed strategies for bringing about the integration of technologies and school reform. And, Pea and Gomez (1992), through work funded by the National Science Foundation, identify strategies which need to be employed in order to bring distributed multimedia learning environments into reality.
Ramirez's View of 21st Century Learners
In order to be product citizens in a global village and a global economy, 21st Century Students need to be prepared to be:
* Multilingual
* Multicultural
* Information literate
* Technologically literate
* Citizens in a Democratic Society
Fullan's Strategies to Realize School Change
1. Develop describable change strategies
2. Engage in evolutionary planning and consensus building.
3. Employ technical assistance for all.
4. Focus on building collaborative work cultures.
5. Work on school-district and school-external relationships
6. Establish an inquiring, problem-solving mindset
Means and Olson: Technology and Education Reform
1. Professional development for staff, including technical assistance, and time structured for collaborative activities.
2. Communications with and support from people inside and outside of the school in order for staff to begin, and to continue to develop innovative technology programs.
Pea's and Gomez's Strategies to Realize Distributed Multi-Media Learning Environments
1. Partnerships between corporate, governmental, and academic agencies
2. Research related to developing technologies specifically for education
3. Research on teaching and learning in multimedia learning environments
Focus on the Support of 21st Century Learners through Distance Education
To prepare learners for successful lives in the 21st century, distance education can play a vital role as part of distributed multilingual-multicultural-multimedia learning environments of the future. These environments will provide resources and opportunities for all learners so that they may grow to successfully cooperate and compete locally, nationally, and internationally. Eventually operating in those three arenas for their personal and work experiences, 21st century learners will need to become multilingual and multicultural as this will become increasingly important to them personally and our national interests.
Distributed multilingual-multicultural-multimedia learning environments enable English speaking students to gain proficiency in other languages and to understand the contexts of other cultures as they interact with peers who are learning the language and peers who are native speakers in the United States and abroad. These learning environments of the future also enable English language learners to develop their literacy skills in English and to maintain their home language for personal and professional uses.
Distance learning, as part of these distributed learning environments, provides critical strategies for students to become information literate in all content areas, and technologically literate. These environments provide students with authentic learning opportunities in which they must gather information, discern its credibility and usefulness, and use it to construct new knowledge with other learners.
Distance education will open up new and exciting ways for students to learn to participate in our democratic processes, and understand what it is to be a citizen in a democratic society and in the world of the 21st century. And, of greatest importance, distance education may help us to address the access and equity issues which have plagued us in the past, to ensure that traditionally underserved populations participate in these rich learning environments,and are successful in the future.
In order to realize this vision, distance education also needs to play a critical role in supporting new models of professional development so that educational staffs in the future can support the learners of the 21st century.
New Models of Professional Development Supported by Distance Education
Experts in professional development and school restructuring provide us with background on the critical role professional development will play in moving us into the reformed and technology-based learning environments of the 21st century. Darling-Hammond (1996) traces some recent thinking about teacher professional development:
"As recently as 10 years ago, the idea that teacher knowledge was critical for educational improvement had little currency. Continuing a tradition begun at the turn of the 20th century, policymakers searched for the right set of test prescriptions, textbook adoptions, and curriculum directives to be packaged and mandated to guide practice. Educational reform was "teacher proofed" with hundreds of pieces of legislation and thousands of discrete regulations prescribing what educators should do.
More recent efforts differ from past strategies that did not consider how ideas would make it from the statehouse to the school house. New initiatives are investing in the front lines of education. Policymakers increasingly realize that regulations cannot transform schools; only teachers, in collaboration with parents and administrators, can do that."
Joyce and Calhoun (1996) studied school-improvement programs which proved successful in five schools. In these schools, professional development is extensive and effective, using a model of school improvement which is research-based. Within it, professional development is primarily a process of inquiry, with a focus on how the school can improve the learning capability of the students and staff.
"The process . . . involves the total faculty, builds community, serves to increase student learning through the study of instruction and curriculum, and seeks to provide a nurturant organization through collective study of the health of the school."
Conley (1997) came to these conclusions about the importance of classroom-focused professional development to school restructuring.
"Professional development is another critical linchpin in the restructuring process. There is no simple model or program that will work in all schools. Instead, schools will need to focus development on those areas most closely linked to successful classroom practice, and generally grounded in an academic discipline. Teachers will need more than instruction in a new technique. They will require opportunities to understand, practice, and refine the technique. They will need to visit and compare experiences with other teachers engaged in similar tasks. They will need training that they can apply directly in the classroom but that is not simply prescriptive. They will benefit from membership and participation in networks that allow them to connect with like-minded colleagues within a district, region, or state.
These new models of professional development are demanding, but have shown they can result in successful adoption and implementation of new teaching techniques, something that cannot be said for much of the training offered over the past thirty years."
Distance education can support these new models of professional development in a variety of ways, promoting critical movement toward school reform and the effective use of the new learning environments of the 21st century. Distance education connects policy makers, staffs, and community to others at schools sites, universities and other agencies, to share their expertise in classroom practices and professional development. The use of television and video components in distance education provide new opportunities for all to see effective content, pedagogy, learning environments, and student-teacher interactions. Interactive television and online access provide opportunities for all to create an ongoing dialogue about school and classroom practices and professional development. Mathline, a PBS project, partially funded through OERI, is an excellent example of use of video and online services to develop a national community of learners, providing ongoing, reflective and collegial professional development opportunities for teachers.
Distance education assists all stakeholders in developing a vision of the desired changes in the learning environment, content and pedagogy. It provides opportunities for policy makers to understand the new models of professional development, and their necessity, thereby increasing the likelihood of their support through policies and funding. Distance education can also help to generate supportive environments for professional development by creating dialogue around provocative ideas, and guiding staffs through processes to:
* create a culture at the school site which supports inquiry and collegial working groups
* include the critical phases of gaining knowledge, challenging assumptions, identifying effective strategies, practicing new strategies, reflecting, and refining practices
* utilizing the elements of examining evidence critically, looking at multiple viewpoints, making connections, finding alternatives and looking for meaning.
Distance education also provides in-classroom learning experiences for teachers, where they directly apply what they have learned in a non-threatening environment with the guidance of the distance learning instructor, analyzing for themselves how successful new practices are with their students. The TEAMS Distance Learning Star Schools Projects, from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, are excellent examples of this model of in-classroom learning for teachers.
Distance education can use technologies to reach large numbers of participants across the nation or region, but at the school site that programming in addition to other vehicles can be combined to support local collegial professional development, at a one-on-one level of specificity and intensity. The Healthlinks Star Schools Project, from the Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Teleccommunications provided a model to do so, through the use of a combination of strategies, including: in-class distance learning experiences, professional development programs, project meeting staff development conducted via videoconferencing, project web resources, and supporting teleconferences.
In summary, distance education can provide us with cost effective ways of supporting a level and kind of professional development which has not been available to teachers in the past. It provides some of the answers for long-term, sequential professional development that is classroom and research-based, available to large numbers of teachers, but which can be tailored to the needs of specific schools and teachers, and which can engage them in a process of inquiry, respecting the skills, knowledge and understanding which they bring to the process.
Educational Reform and Distance Education: What Next?
The education reform movement has led to major changes in classroom roles and organization, with learners taking a far more active role in constructing their own learning than in the past. David (1994) described this change as she linked the educational reform effort directly to the potential of technology:
"The systemic reform agenda of the 1990s no longer aims to improve what schools are already doing. National and state policymakers, including governors as well as educational and business leaders, now imagine a restructured educational system that qualitatively increases the performance of all students. The language of the reform agenda communicates a very different image of teaching and learning from the traditional image in which teachers 'deliver' knowledge and assign seatwork. The new image captures a much more dynamic view of schooling in which teachers guide students through individual and collaborative activities that encourage inquiry and the construction of knowledge. . . . . Moreover, this new conception of teaching and learning is much more compatible with the early visions of technology's promise than are the traditional views of teaching and learning."
Distance educators have several choices in addressing the role they might play in advancing educational reform. One, they might ignore the reform movement, and use new distance learning technologies to promote old ways of teaching and learning. Two, they might reflect the movement, and provide technological tools and information resources that support existing educational reform efforts. Finally, and most excitingly and appropriately, they might embrace the reform challenge and lead the way by encouraging teachers and students to learn new things in new ways and provide new models of distance education as catalysts for true educational change.
In the early days of distance learning, the primary research question was frequently, which was "better" at transmitting the same information, a live teacher in a face-to-face classroom, or a televised teacher who was broadcast out to remote groups of students. Many early research studies focused on comparing live instruction with some form of mediated instruction, with the assumption that each had the same learning goals and intent. Stephen Ehrmann, in a recent on-line article, "Asking the Right Questions: What Does Research Tell Us about Technology and Higher Learning?", referred to these kinds of either-or comparisons as "useless questions", as they certainly do not get to the heart of distance education. Ehrmann quoted Professor Roxanne Hiltz at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in a talk on an early use of computer conferencing.
"I've got two pieces of bad news about that experimental English comp course where students used computer conferencing. First, over the course of the semester, the experimental group showed no progress in abilities to compose an essay. The second piece of bad news is that the control group, taught by traditional methods, showed no progress either."
Rather than asking how distance education can promote old ways of teaching and learning, our research agenda for the future needs to "push the envelope." Our questions need to focus on how distance education can provide new paradigms for learning and educational reform and how these can best address the issues of access and equity and address the needs of traditionally underserved populations. Our emphasis should not be on replicating what already happens in a traditional classroom, but on how distance education can transform learning and learning environments. Our Star Schools Performance Indicator work, as mandated by the Government Performance and Results Act, has begun moving in that direction by highlighting the access to new learning opportunities distance education provides that would otherwise not be available to learners. The research questions we ask -- and answer -- should help us realize a new vision and role for distance education.
A Research Agenda for the Future
One goal of the Distance Education Forum was to develop a focused set of research questions to help drive the vision for distance education into a reality. In addition, OERI recently sponsored a series of focus groups to learn what kinds of questions educators in general hoped would be addressed in future research initiatives. We have incorporated questions from those focus groups into this agenda. The emerging questions are linked to both the vision and the challenges participants associated with distance education. Many questions were raised during open-ended discussion, and the questions came together under the following broad headings:
* equity and access issues
* professional development
* learning and the "best fit - best use" for distance education
* technology and distance education in society
* cost factors
* dissemination
Professional Development
This involves both pre- and in-service education and ongoing support for a host of roles within distance education.
* What kind of professional development do teachers/parents/librarians need?
* How can we impact learning and prepare teachers in institutions of higher education?
* How can we get institutions of higher education to implement effective models of pre- service preparation?
* How do you help teachers integrate technology into the curriculum?
* How can we actively involve teachers in designing and conducting research, as well as in using research?
* How do we develop a support system? What are different ways to provide technical assistance?
* What are the technology courses and curriculum degree programs, etc., currently offered at schools of education?
* What are the incentives that stimulate professional growth for lifelong learning for educators?
* How can national high standard teacher certification requirements be applied to accreditation issues in distance education and teaching?
* What research and curricular models link pre-service and in-service education with ongoing professional growth and development (K-12, higher education, continuing education)?
Learning and the "Best Fit" for Distance Education
We need to examine how distance education can best enhance learning in a variety of contexts for diverse learners of all ages.
* How do we assess what learning occurs, and what are the best technologies to facilitate this learning?
* How can distance learning technologies be effectively integrated into classroom instruction to enhance the achievement of educational goals?
* What are student gains through the technology? How are we supporting students to make these gains? How do students "master" technology, and what constitutes the knowledge base? What are the effects on cognitive development?
* What models of effective evaluation and assessment support technology-based teaching and learning styles?
* Are there certain technologies and distance instructional models that support certain learners and/or certain content and/or certain cognitive processes?
* How do you address the issue of discipline-specific research?
* What are the combinations of rich curricula, pedagogy, and technologies that are making a difference in helping students achieve at high levels?
Equity and Access Issues
Issues of access are extremely important, as distance education has its roots in providing learners access to educational opportunities not otherwise available to them.
* Who is being served? What learners are benefiting? How do we improve?
* How do we document how technology is accessed and how users know how to get what they need?
* How do we promote equity of access? What instructional models provide greater access to traditionally underserved populations?
* What does distance education provide or allow that would not happen without the technologies?
* What does technology "get us" in education that nothing else does?
We need indicators that help us reveal what students have with distance learning versus their not having it at all without distance learning
Technology and Distance Education in Society
Examining the impact of technology on our society and vice versa is vital.
* How can distance education best support lifelong learning in a diverse society?
* What kind of work force do we need to prepare students for in the year 2010? How can/should we use technology to help prepare these students?
* What does it mean to manage information in the technology age? Who does it?
* How do new models impact the local community? What is the relationship of new technology to the dynamics of a community?
* What are effective models for building school/work/community collaborations through technology?
* How technologically literate is the population (K-12 parents, teachers, adult learners, etc.) to answer the why, the how, the what we do with technology? What are society's priorities? Is technology what they want? What's the connection between what we value, teach, and test?
* What are teachers', administrators', and policymakers' attitudes toward a federal role (national test, national standards, national frameworks, etc.)?
* What are the psychological and sociological impacts of the use of technology?
* What are the elements that promote schools without walls? School at work? What are the resources needed for this?
* What are the standards for employable literacy, e.g. reading, math, science, writing, technology, communication, media?
Cost Factors
Pragmatic concerns often drive philosophical and pedagogical concerns.
* Why is distance education worth the cost?
* What is the added value of having technology to enhance learning and organizational capabilities?
* What are the costs of not having technical assistance?
* We need: research into the funding of local and state agencies, effective partnerships; guidelines and models for structuring partnerships with vendors.
* How do we determine opportunity costs: cost-effectiveness, cost-efficiency, cost- benefit analysis?
Dissemination
If our research findings are not shared and used, there is no point in conducting the research.
* We need to learn what is successful, what is not successful, and what the next steps or directions are - then disseminate that information.
* How do we present results to policymakers? If people haven't experienced distance education, how do we bring this to the policymakers?
* How do we best share instructional strategies with policymakers using students' work?
* Should we use the media in reporting evaluation results?
* How do we present, disseminate, and share research findings in ways that are useful to practitioners?
The research questions posed here present challenges and opportunities to distance educators and funding agencies, indeed to the nation. We must identify the most pressing issues, the ones that will help shape our vision of distance education to a reality, and move forward together to answer these questions and create the appropriate learning environment for the 21st century.
Public Policy Implications
Public Policy should address the importance of communication and collaboration in shaping the future of distance education. With this in mind, many distance educators have offered the following strategy suggestions:
* Distance Educators should be included in "Education Summits" called by government and corporate entities; people with expertise in distance education need to be informed and help to inform when new policy is being shaped.
* Cooperation rather than competition between and among institutions of higher education, including acceptance of cross-certification, credits, fees, would help to develop broad-based professional standards and competencies
* Intellectual property and copyright issues are becoming more prevalent, and need to be addressed consistently and fairly.
* Changes in local control occur when using national models and resources. Control of local curriculum and teacher certification are issues that must be faced.
Connectivity Solutions to Support the Vision
Schatz describes the actions which need to be taken regarding connectivity.
"The critical connectivity issue which is before us today is the issue of technology integration. In the digital and information age in which we live, we can no longer afford to take the historic myopic view of single technology solutions. While we must continue to move forward to utilize the greatest technological capabilities at the lowest costs, we must not leave behind the huge capital investment which has already been made in infrastructure development throughout the country. There are many technological solutions being utilized today which include analog and digital C and Ku satellite systems, full-motion analog and digital fiber networks, compressed video H.320 systems, Internet-based video and data solutions, ITFS and point-to-point microwave networks along with evolving motion JPEG and MPEG2 solutions which may result in higher qualities at lower bandwidth utilization. In order to take advantage of the existing capital investments and to further build upon those investments in an effective and cost-efficient way, we must require technological solutions that will allow us to integrate these investments into seamless connectivity.
In order to take optimum advantage of our technological investments now and in the future, we must reject proprietary solutions and seek standards-based solutions which will allow the kind of connectivity that will support local, regional, statewide, national, and international utilization. It is no longer about choosing or setting a technological standard for our schools but rather about choosing those standards-based solutions that will support the dynamic bandwidth requirements defined by the needs of the educational community."
The Role of the Federal Government
Distance educators have offered suggestions for the role of the Federal Government in advancing the potential, funding, and implementation of effective distance education.
* Develop public dialogue and policy which create a supportive environment comprised of adequate funding, regulations, and practices for the integration of distance education into the instructional opportunities for all students.
* Conduct research leading to the development of appropriate technologies and most effective uses of technologies to improve the educational opportunities for all students.
* Share effective practices. Provide national dissemination channels so these effective practices are easily accessible to schools and organizations interested in using distance education in their programs.
* Encourage and facilitate evaluations whose findings are presented in a form that is accessible to front-line educators. Make these findings accessible and available through the above national dissemination channels.
* Develop dialogue and policy on who provides accreditation for "schools" of the future and how teachers can be certified across university, state and national jurisdictions
* Reinforce the need for legislation which addresses a diversity of technology applications
* Provide for funding of highly collaborative projects at local, statewide, multi-state, regional and national levels as appropriate to ensure the most effective solution to given needs.
* Continue to develop and expand vision, commitment, funding, training, broadscale involvement, and specific goals for distance education. We need to re-construct a plan for the information superhighway. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, while providing for the E-rate for schools and libraries, is only one small policy factor. Training, content, school building upgrades, also need to be addressed. state levels.
* Trade and Commerce Implications: Solomon suggested: "The US Department of Education has been instrumental in expanding the role of distance learning throughout the nation. Since distance technologies render geography less relevant, the global nature of education will present entrepreneurial opportunities. To capitalize on the vast intellectual resources of this nation, education using distance learning technologies can become a large source of revenue of United States' institutions. Quality education can become an export commodity. In that regard, a new initiative could be explored with the government's trade and commerce departments to plan and, ultimately, maximize the revenue potential of US education. By considering the use of distance learning technologies as a vehicle to expand trade and commerce of one of the nation's most valuable assets -- education -- the nation will be well positioned to expand its economic base."
Conclusion
A coordinated research agenda, when implemented, will move the vision of distance education presented herein forward with a cohesive, integrated corpus of new knowledge. The strategy suggestions and policy implications above recommend collaboration and communication among all stakeholders. We agree with the belief expressed by Brown (1994):
"Learning and teaching depend heavily on creating, sustaining, and expanding a community of research practice. Members of the community are critically dependent on each other. No one is an island; no one knows it all; collaborative learning is not just nice, but necessary for survival."
With our combined efforts, distance education can be a catalyst and prosper, as we continue in this era of rapid technological advancement. As a vehicle for reform and engaging learning opportunities for all community of learners, we need to encourage coalitions of public and private agencies, working together with communities, to support:
* the continuation of national, state, and local dialogue and resulting action on a vision for distance education
* the needs of 21st century learners
* professional development for teachers and administrators in support of expanded educational technologies
* a strong research agenda to support enhanced teaching and learning with educational technologies
* development of public policy and the role of the federal government to support these steps.