Digital Schools by Darrell M. West

Author:Darrell M. West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

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Distance Learning

Technology offers a host of possibilities for connecting far-flung students with the classroom. It brings geographically disparate individuals together with instructors, allowing for a rich variety of educational resources and interactive materials. It enables those who live far from traditional institutions to take classes and gain access to various types of educational materials. Distance learning offers the potential to reduce regional disparities and promote greater educational opportunity among underserved populations.1

Observers claim that these programs represent a way to disrupt higher education and force greater innovation in terms of education delivery, teaching approach, and cost structure.2 Rather than sticking with models based on residential colleges and bricks and mortar high schools, distance learning delivers courses in novel ways to new kinds of students. It shifts the business model by enlarging potential markets, on one hand, and relying on new education providers, on the other. Anya Kamenetz argues that web-based instruction will transform higher education and lead to greater variety both in education institutions and target audiences.3

But the impact of distance learning on the education enterprise remains to be seen.4 Much research on distance learning has been conducted over the past decade, but most of it is descriptive in nature and is based on case studies, ethnographies, or narrative approaches. Only 20 percent of the studies rely on more rigorous approaches, such as quasi-experimental or random controlled trials.5 Those studies make it possible to test key hypotheses regarding education operations and their impact.

How transformational distance education will be is not yet clear, owing to a variety of constraining factors.6 These include teacher attitudes, school adoption levels, budgetary constraints during a time of massive government deficits, pedagogic limitations, student behavior, and public policy.7 Because service delivery is subject to state-level education regulation, it is hard for national providers to reach across state lines and deliver online services.8 Jurisdictions operate under their own rules, and some place limits on out-of-state transfer credits or force schools to go through the transfer state's accreditation process.

The subject of transformation is important because some academic research has found that face-to-face education has produced “little learning on college campuses.” For example, the sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa find that of the 2,300 undergraduates they studied using achievement exams undertaken as part of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, “45 percent…demonstrate no significant improvements in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college.”9

These possible weaknesses in American higher education challenge educators to see whether other learning models might produce better results. If the status quo is not producing discernible results for certain students, it makes sense to look for alternative models with the potential for greater impact. These would include distance learning and outreach to a broader range of students.

Distance learning is a relatively recent development, and so there is much about it that is not well understood. How have these programs grown over time, and what are the current models of distance learning? How do these activities affect students, teachers, university

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