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4.17.13
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Distance
Education

Purpose
Although
distance education has existed for over a century, mostly as correspondence
courses through postal services, radio, and television, this pedagogical
approach has proliferated over the last two decades as various computer
applications have made it more manageable and accessible–not to
mention cheaper and potentially more profitable. For many instructors
the challenge of teaching distance education courses is figuring out how
to map traditional courses onto a distance course. But this may not be
the best approach. Instead, we may want to think of distance education
pedagogy as an approach in and of itself. Likewise, we may be able to
develop better approaches for teaching aspects of our traditional courses
by considering the strategies we use to teach distance education. Today
we will examine the best teaching practices for distance education and
their implications for other teaching contexts.

ePoster Session and Pedagogical Article
We will discuss the final assignments of the semester–the e-Poster Session and Pedagogical
Article.
Activity
– Our Principles Were Approved in Vegas
Read though the recently approved Position Statement of Principles for Online Writing Instruction (just the principles). Pretending that the assigned technology below is your campus's primary program for mediating distance education, think about 1) the principles, 2) the assigned technology, 3) the assigned readings, and 4) your own experiences with the assigned technology. Use these sources of information to compose a memo to your provost explaining how writing instructors across campus and their departments/programs should respond to these principles specifically using this technology. You may make assumptions about the faculties current use of these technologies.
Technology |
Members |
WebEx |
April, Mae, Beth |
Blackboard |
Sarah J, Wil, Matt |
Google
Documents |
Sarah S, Susan, Amy |
You have
an 45 minutes to complete your row. Then we will discuss what we have
produced.
Discussion
– Talking about DE at a Distance, Mostly
We will
discuss the following:
- What
questions, comment, and/or concerns do you have about these articles?
- What
are their respective arguments?
- Cargile
Cook and Rude, respectively, provide suggestions about setting up and
preparing for distance education. Due to the growing ubiquity of both
technology in classrooms and certain features of distance education
(in hybrid classrooms) what suggestions do you think will lose their
relevancy (because they will essentially resolve themselves for most)?
which suggestions do you think will have staying power?
- As a
distance student in the English PhD program or as a student who has
been in one of the courses taught in the Gornto studios (yes, this is
all of you), which arguments or claims made in these articles spoke
to or contrdicted your experiences?
- What
are the implications for the technology we are using now? What is its
potential? What are its limitations?
- Based
upon the readings for today, how might we set up any of the courses that
you developed for your pedagogy project to be taught at a distance?

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