Elements of Distance Education Diffusion- Collaborative Interaction

Collaborative interaction has evolved tremendously in terms of distance education.  "Online courses offer the opportunity to create a highly social learning environment, characterized by participation and interactivity for both students and instructors" (Walti & Blaschke, 2009).  Distance education allows people from all over the world collaborate using technology.  It can be through a blog, e-mail, Skype, Google Chat, or from many other social media sites.  As technology advances, it allows for more and better opportunities to collaborate with anyone from anywhere.  Collaboration at a distance through e-mail and phone conversations has evolved into face time and social media type collaboration.  Doering, Miller, and Veletsianos (2008) discusses adventure learning as a part of a collaborative curriculum.  They see this as an opportunity to work with other students, teachers, and content experts.  It allows for discovery through virtual visits and interaction with various sites according to the content learned.   I agree that collaborative learning has evolved through distance education.  With the use of technology and distance education programs, we can learn about anything using more that reading skills.


References:
Brindley, J., Blaschke, L., & Walti, C. (2009). Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment.The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 10(3). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271

Doering, A., Miller, C., & Veletsianos, G. (2008). ADVENTURE LEARNING: Educational, social, and technological affordances for collaborative hybrid distance education. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 9(3), 249-265,347-348. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/231182838?accountid=14872

Need to evolve distance education to the next generation!

The next generation of distance education is a hot topic in the field of education and business.  Distance education is being used for many reasons.  Teacher shoratges, class varitey, convinence, home-school, credit recovery, and alternative school to name a few.  Simonson (2013) discussed the main use in higher education for convience of adult learners.  K-12 schools and now getting on the bandwagon and using it as tools in the classroom and for high school creidts.  My school is using it for alternative school.  Huett, Moller, Foshay, and Coleman (2008) express that teacher, parents, and students can benefit for the use of distance education in that parents can view student progress and students that are not communiative are more open for a discussion post.  I agree with both positions.  Distance education opens many doors to solve problems that exsist in edcuation.  It can increase high school graduation rates and collaboration with students with various learning styles.  Distance education needs to evolve into the next generation for all the reasons above.  Our society could be more educated given better opportunities for diversity.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2013). Distance education: The next generation[Video webcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_3462449_1%26url%3D

Moller, L., Forshay, W. R., & Huett, J. (2008). The Evolution of Distance Education: Implications for Instructional Design on the Potential of the Web. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 52(3), 70-75. doi:10.1007/s11528-008-0158-5. http://web.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=6407b0ab-eca4-465f-b900-f7424f7ac93a%40sessionmgr110&hid=117