DL Johnston Question 2

From LiteracyTentWiki

QUESTION 2. What distance learning models are most successful in retaining adult learners' interest and active participation over time?

The essence of distance education is self study, where learners work their way through materials designed to teach. The single most important factor in learner success is having a teacher who provides encouragement, helps set manageable goals, and helps the learner master difficult concepts. Providing such support in a faceless context is tricky. In a classroom a teacher can easily read the needs of each student. It's much more difficult when the teacher must depend on electronic summaries of student progress (or workbooks exchanged by mail) to judge a student's progress and then use e-mail or a telephone call to provide encouragement and feedback.

Some learners need very little support while others need a lot. We encourage putting learners in a distance course only if they are functioning at a fairly high level (7th grade reading and math) and are self-directed. But there is a lot of variation in self-directedness. Distance programs in most states start out trying to make a Pure Distance model work; after a face-to-face orientation, learners do almost all of their studying at a distance. With time and experience we have seen many Pure Distance programs become Hybrid programs, where learners do most of their work at home, but have the opportunity to come to class on a regular basis for help-perhaps once a week or once every two weeks. The reason is that they find many distance learners need more systematic support.

Some programs have students start in a classroom setting. As the teacher sees learners gain confidence with their studies they allow them come to class less frequently and do more of their assignments at home. This is easy to do when the class is built around a packaged curriculum (e.g., GED Connection or Crossroads Café). It is easy to pick lessons that can be done outside of class.

In your experience teaching at a distance, what models have worked best for your learners? Do you vary your approach based on student needs?

J E R O M E J O H N S T O N
Director, Project IDEAL Support Center
Institute for Social Research - University of Michigan
734/763-3079 (734) 615-6638 (fax) jerej@umich.edu

This question and Jerome Johnston's reply were posted in the context of a July, 2005 discussion on the NIFL-Technology electronic list. The whole discussion will be found at http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/DistanceLearning