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last.updated 11.4.09

 

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.


Discussion – Talking about Distance at Distance

We will log onto Adobe Acrobat Connect at the start of class–4:20. We will use the first 20 minutes of class to get oriented and make sure everyone can use the functions we are testing today.

Use the following instruction to log onto Adobe Acrobat Connect...

Click on the link to Adobe Acrobat Connect

Once the program loads...

  • Go to Meeting > Manage My Settings > My Connection Speed
    • Select the type of method you are using to connect. For most of you, it will be DSL/Cable
  • Go to Meeting > Manage My Settings > Audio Setup Wizard
    • Do the five-step Wizard
    • When you get to the fifth and last screen, click Settings... and then check the Echo Suppression box
  • Go to Meetings > Manage My Settings > Select Camera
    • A window will appear with four options; make sure the option with the webcam is chosen. Choose the type of camera you will be using

Now that you have set up the space...

  • Go to the Camera and Video Pod (right side) and click the camera and microphone icon (Start my camera and voice) in the bottom left corner of the pod

Your image should appear in the pod

To create order during the converation, the instructor is encouraging you to virtially raise your hand to speak. To do this...

  • Go to the Attendee List pod (top left). Right above the names, click the My Status drop-down menu > Raise Hand. The instructor will acknowledge you in the order he sees you.

If we cannot get everybody on the video chat function, then we will switch to the textual chat function in Adobe Acrobat Connect.

We will discuss the following:

  • What questions 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 the Reading & Writing Popular Culture course (that we began developing last week) to be taught at a distance?