Monday, January 31, 2011

A Different Perspective on Distance Education

We tend to face the changes of the future with some resistance. This is natural because most people are adverse to change and the bigger the change the greater the resistance. However, it is often useful to view it from the opposite perspective. That is, imagine you are in the future rolling back the change. How good would that be?

So, for the sake of argument, imagine a future where all education is available over the web. People can try different things and find what they are good at. They are not restricted from programs because of geography, program size or space limitations. They can proceed according to their own interests and at their own pace. They can easily fit it into their busy schedules

And then, for some reason, the unthinkable happens. The web goes down. Educators trying to find a back up way to educate people would  say, "Well, if we could get them all in the same room at the same time in small groups we could do it that way." Does anyone really think that could work?

It is hard to imagine a world in which distance education is commonplace having to revert back to the way we do things today. Perhaps the way we do things today is not the best way. Maybe it is just making the best of a bad situation.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Distance Education

It has been a while since I posted to this blog. All the usual excuses apply. I was busy. I was tired of writing for a while. Heck, I was just lazy. But, I am over it and ready to start posting again. I have done a lot of work with distance education over the past six months and am going to jot down some of my notes here.

I think distance education has enormous potential both educationally and economically. That is to say, there is money to be made and people to be educated. The biggest problem at the moment, as it usually the case, is a failure of both understanding and imagination. I would point to the early days of the web as an analogy. In the early 1990's it was hard to see applications for web technologies. By the mid 1990's that was sorted out. And by the late 1990's we had the dot com bubble. I don't think distance education will happen quite as quickly. But, I think it will happen. And the impact will be of similar magnitude. So, I am going to write down some of my thoughts about this emerging phenomenon here over the next few weeks or months.