What should be the future trends in Distance Education (DE)and Instructional Design (ID)?
ID should play a key role in building a research base to make decisions on ID for K-12.
The key is that the ID must serve the needs of students and the ID must ensure that the environment where the course is delivered is supportive for student-centered courses.
We may need to reorganization and hire professionals to develop DE curricula to meet these needs and to determine how we engage learners. Nationalize curricula like the AP courses are starting to emerge. We must honor that DE is not another quick fix educational program and we must focus on the needs of the learner.
George Siemens (2010) sees the role of teachers as radically different as students have varied access to information and collaborations, start asking their own questions. Siemens refers to it as “fragmentation of content” and sees the teacher role more as
1.Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modelling
7. Persistent presence
Refer to Siemens’ blog posting on connectivism, Siemens. (2010, Feb 16). Teaching in Social and Technological Networks and Connectivism. Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=220.
In addition, it is always interesting to examine the Horizon Report for future trends. In the next four to five years, the 2010 Horizon Report anticipates gesture-based computing, retrieved from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/chapters/gesture-based-computing/. A collection of future trends in Distance Education can be followed on Future Trends in DE Facebook, retrieved from
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Trends-in-Distance-Education/137930219558379.
Learning and the role of the student and the teacher are rapidly changing. Jay Cross Blog reports that “individuals are becoming their own instructional designers and knowledge navigators.” Cross. (2005). Retrieved from http://metatime.blogspot.com/2005/10/george-siemens-connectivism.html
In conclusion, since there is such a gap in the research and when comparing DE to f2f, what research we have is not showing significant differences, we need to build a research base for e-learning and ID.
Showing posts with label K-12 DE future trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label K-12 DE future trends. Show all posts
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
What are the future trends for ID (instructional design) and DE (distance education) in the K-12 world?
What is the e-learning and instructional design (ID) research gap in K-12?
What are the future trends for ID and distance education (DE) in the K-12 world?
What does K-12 DE look like now?
In the educational world of K-12, DE is not growing as exponentially as higher ed, but we re seeing a steady growth, especially at our own southern California charter school where we are challenged with thousands of K-12 students that are home schooled.
We are also starting to see the emergence of free AP and Honors courses developed with short animations and videos for each concept (hippocampus http://www.hippocampus.org/) and other sites (http://www.khanacademy.org/), Alex, UC Regents. Some are not courses, but are great video resources for individual concepts.
Our charter school is currently using Moodle as a vehicle for out teachers to develop curriculum for academy (hybrid of f2f and home) and full time home school students. These are basically a series of assignments that correspond to textbook and other resources. It is not a flowing, learner-centered ID and has very little technological activities with the exception of links videos and online tutorials. It really is more of an attempt to copy classroom activities or replace them with boring worksheets if classroom activities are not possible for the home school student.
This semester, we have hired a consulting firm (e-Concordia) to help develop two courses with more multimedia infused (at a very high cost).
What are the biggest concerns or fears for what DE could be?
Some of the concerns expressed in the Huett, et al (2008) article are the mixed student populations which may consist of students that are least likely to succeed in the autonomous DE environment. The fear is that DE will become a dumping ground for credit recovery and
dropout students from traditional schools. As a result, the ID opportunities may be seriously underutilized.
This mixed population of students may face several outside distractions in their life styles – travel, social commitments, looking for enrichment, employed, rural, hospitalized, homebound, incarcerated, and be more of a challenge to reach through DE.
The choice between synchronous and asynchronous is a significant consideration with the K-12 population and asynchronous may not be a viable option for most because of little personal interaction with students and teacher. There are several issues of supervision and accountability especially with the younger and/or more immature students.
There is definitely a gap in the research-based effectiveness of online DE and ID at the K-12 grades. Another concern is the lack of trained professionals in DE and ID and that the courses may be developed to look like an f2f class, which would be counterproductive (Simonson, 2000).
According to Simonson’s equivalency theory, DE needs to provide “different but equivalent learning experiences for each learner.” (pg 29).
What should be the future trends in DE and ID?
ID should play a key role in building a research base to make decisions on ID for K-12.
The key is that the ID must serve the needs of students and the ID must ensure that the environment where the course is delivered is supportive for student-centered courses.
We may need to reorganization and hire professionals to develop DE curricula to meet these needs and to determine how we engage learners. Nationalize curricula like the AP courses are starting to emerge. We must honor that DE is not another quick fix educational program and we must focus on the needs of the learner.
In conclusion, since there is such a gap in the research and when comparing DE to f2f, what research we have is not showing significant differences, we need to build a research base for e-learning and ID.
References:
Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshey, W., Coleman, C. (2008). The Evolution of distance education:
Implications for instructional design and the potential of the web (Part 3: K-12). TechTrends
(52)5, pp 63-67.
Simonson, M. (2000). Making decisions: The use of electronic technology in online classrooms.
New Directions for Teaching and Learning, (Winter), 84, pp. 29-34.
Tags:
DE, ID, K-12 DE future trends, equivalency theory.
What are the future trends for ID and distance education (DE) in the K-12 world?
What does K-12 DE look like now?
In the educational world of K-12, DE is not growing as exponentially as higher ed, but we re seeing a steady growth, especially at our own southern California charter school where we are challenged with thousands of K-12 students that are home schooled.
We are also starting to see the emergence of free AP and Honors courses developed with short animations and videos for each concept (hippocampus http://www.hippocampus.org/) and other sites (http://www.khanacademy.org/), Alex, UC Regents. Some are not courses, but are great video resources for individual concepts.
Our charter school is currently using Moodle as a vehicle for out teachers to develop curriculum for academy (hybrid of f2f and home) and full time home school students. These are basically a series of assignments that correspond to textbook and other resources. It is not a flowing, learner-centered ID and has very little technological activities with the exception of links videos and online tutorials. It really is more of an attempt to copy classroom activities or replace them with boring worksheets if classroom activities are not possible for the home school student.
This semester, we have hired a consulting firm (e-Concordia) to help develop two courses with more multimedia infused (at a very high cost).
What are the biggest concerns or fears for what DE could be?
Some of the concerns expressed in the Huett, et al (2008) article are the mixed student populations which may consist of students that are least likely to succeed in the autonomous DE environment. The fear is that DE will become a dumping ground for credit recovery and
dropout students from traditional schools. As a result, the ID opportunities may be seriously underutilized.
This mixed population of students may face several outside distractions in their life styles – travel, social commitments, looking for enrichment, employed, rural, hospitalized, homebound, incarcerated, and be more of a challenge to reach through DE.
The choice between synchronous and asynchronous is a significant consideration with the K-12 population and asynchronous may not be a viable option for most because of little personal interaction with students and teacher. There are several issues of supervision and accountability especially with the younger and/or more immature students.
There is definitely a gap in the research-based effectiveness of online DE and ID at the K-12 grades. Another concern is the lack of trained professionals in DE and ID and that the courses may be developed to look like an f2f class, which would be counterproductive (Simonson, 2000).
According to Simonson’s equivalency theory, DE needs to provide “different but equivalent learning experiences for each learner.” (pg 29).
What should be the future trends in DE and ID?
ID should play a key role in building a research base to make decisions on ID for K-12.
The key is that the ID must serve the needs of students and the ID must ensure that the environment where the course is delivered is supportive for student-centered courses.
We may need to reorganization and hire professionals to develop DE curricula to meet these needs and to determine how we engage learners. Nationalize curricula like the AP courses are starting to emerge. We must honor that DE is not another quick fix educational program and we must focus on the needs of the learner.
In conclusion, since there is such a gap in the research and when comparing DE to f2f, what research we have is not showing significant differences, we need to build a research base for e-learning and ID.
References:
Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshey, W., Coleman, C. (2008). The Evolution of distance education:
Implications for instructional design and the potential of the web (Part 3: K-12). TechTrends
(52)5, pp 63-67.
Simonson, M. (2000). Making decisions: The use of electronic technology in online classrooms.
New Directions for Teaching and Learning, (Winter), 84, pp. 29-34.
Tags:
DE, ID, K-12 DE future trends, equivalency theory.
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