An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era

229 Pages·2020·27.068 MB·English

by  Martha F. Cleveland-Innes (editor)

An Introduction to

Distance Education
An Introduction to Distance Education is a comprehensive look at the field
of distance education, outlining current theories, practices, and goals that
are essential to effective design, delivery, and navigation. As an alternative
pedagogical approach, distance education is posited to meet the evolving
demands for access, affordability, and quality in higher education. This fully
revised and updated second edition reviews the history of distance educa-
tion while addressing its current influence on the education sector.
Utilizing a student-g uided approach, chapters offer pedagogical
features to engage and support the teaching and learning process, including:
• questions for reflection, review, and discussion:  students can use
these questions as triggers for further thoughts related to the topic.
Instructors can use these questions for classroom and online discussion
• key quotations: strategically placed throughout the text, these points
act as a springboard for further reflection and classroom discussion
• concept definitions: central concepts discussed in the text are defined
for students at the end of each chapter.
Driven by seminal contributors who are researching and shaping our
understanding and practice of distance education today, An Introduction
to Distance Education offers a solid foundation from which to explore and
develop new approaches to designing and implementing online courses.
Martha F.  Cleveland- Innes is Professor and Program Director in
Graduate Education Programs at Athabasca University, Canada. She is an
award- winning researcher and author in the field of distance and blended
higher education.
D. Randy Garrison is Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary,
Canada. Dr. Garrison has published extensively on teaching and learning
in distance, higher, and adult education contexts.
An Introduction to

Distance Education
Understanding Teaching and
Learning in a New Era
2nd Edition
Edited by
Martha F. Cleveland- Innes
and D. Randy Garrison
Second edition published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Martha F. Cleveland- Innes and D. Randy Garrison to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2010
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Cleveland-Innes, Martha, 1956– editor. |
Garrison, D. R. (D. Randy), 1945– editor.
Title: An introduction to distance education: understanding teaching and
learning in a new era / edited by Martha Cleveland-Innes, and D. Randy Garrison.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020019309 (print) | LCCN 2020019310 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138054400 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138054417 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781315166896 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Distance education.
Classification: LCC LC5800 .I68 2020 (print) |
LCC LC5800 (ebook) | DDC 371.35–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019309
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019310
ISBN: 9781138054400 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781138054417 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781315166896 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents

Foreword: An Attendant Posture by Richard A. Schwier vii

Part I An Evolving Distance Education 1

1 Teaching and Learning in Distance Education:
Continue a New Era 3

M. F. Cleveland- Innes
2 From Independence to Collaboration: A Personal
Retrospective on Distance Education 13

D. R. Garrison
3 Formal and Informal Paths of Lifelong Learning:
Hybrid Distance Educational Settings for the Digital Era 25

J. Jaldemark
4 Failures of Open and Distance Education’s Successes 43

H. Kanuka
Part II Distance Education in the Post-i ndustrial
Context 65

5 Teaching and Learning in Post-I ndustrial Distance
Education 67

K. Swan
vi CONTENTS
6 Into the Breach: The Emerging Landscape in Online
Learning 90

P. Ice and M. Layne
7 Blended Learning Revisited 108

N. Vaughan
8 Repositioning and Re- purposing Distance Education
for the Future 121

T. Evans and B. Pauling
Part III Leading the Change 147

9 Leadership in a New Era of Higher Distance Education 149

A. Sangrà and M. F. Cleveland- Innes
10 From Distance Education to Blended Learning:
Leading Pedagogical Change 168

K. Matheos and M. F. Cleveland- Innes
Part IV Summary and Conclusions 189

11 Teaching, Learning, and Beyond 191

M. F. Cleveland- Innes and D. R. Garrison
Author Biographies 202

Index 211
Foreword

An Attendant Posture

Every person I know acknowledges we are living in a time of profound
social change, and technology has a lot to do with it. We are educators,
so we worry about how to respond to the changes that seem to knock us
around, and in almost the same breath we think about how we can surf
the crest of change to improve teaching and learning. We worry about a
student who is bullied on social media; we thrill at the idea of building a
social network with a partner school in Uganda. We fret about poor band-
width in northern communities; we videoconference with our students
during transcontinental flights. We warn colleagues about the latest online
scam; we invite people we’ve never met to join our online networks. Yin
and yang.
At the bottom of the matter, we are attendant. We have little choice
in the matter, but we can choose our posture. We can huddle in a pro-
tective stance, or we can lean into the changes. This book invites us
to lean into it. The purpose of this foreword is to provide a couple of
snacks you can put in your backpack for the journey on which you’re
about to embark. It’s not to summarize or critique what you’re about
to read (which is elegantly done in Chapter 11, and I recommend you

defy convention and begin your reading there), but rather to hold up
a lantern and encourage you to begin what will be a fascinating and
worthwhile hike.
The scholars in this volume realize it’s about much more than the
technology, and in fact, they realize that the affordances of new technology,
impressive as they appear, are only the beginning for us as educators who
care about distance learning. We, as a collective, care about equity and
social change – change we celebrate with learning designs that promote
inclusivity, diversity, and deep social engagement. Not to over- dramatize it,
viii RICHARD A. SCHWIER
but we see ourselves as part of a movement that can promote big change
in the world. We know that when we take a sledgehammer to the trad-
itional geographic and social boundaries of our work, we not only create
a larger “market” for our work, we actually create new boundaries that
are permeable, but not invisible. When distance learning is responsive to
social and cultural demands, when we acknowledge that everything we
create has socio- cultural implications, we realize we are alchemists, and
well- intentioned alchemists can do good things. But they also have cap-
acity for doing great harm. The most mundane ideas in one culture can
become a dangerous virus in another. So we find ourselves making moral
and ethical, not just practical, decisions when we design and deliver dis-
tance education.
Let’s glance back a couple of decades to think about the state of things
in distance education, just to get a sense of how far we have come. Bernard
et al. (2004), in a landmark meta- analysis of distance education, concluded
that when they examined studies comparing classroom instruction with
distance education, they found effect sizes of essentially zero overall on
attitude, achievement, and retention. Pretty depressing, really. But there
was also great variability among studies, suggesting the overall results were
masking some effects, such as the differences between asynchronous and
synchronous delivery or the designs of the courses.
It is important to remember that at that point in the evolution and
practice of distance education, in the 1980s– 90s when most of the research
they reviewed was conducted, much of the research was about “Fordist”
or on rare occasions “Post-F ordist” education, and barely peeked over the
fence to consider the disruptions just surfacing outside the paddock. The
most innovative of them were concerned with online discussions, learning
management systems, and comparisons of conventional classrooms with
conventional distance education classrooms. Even several years later,
conversations were just beginning to turn to more informal and efferves-
cent online learning, social media, and MOOCs. Dave Cormier’s notion
of “rhizomatic learning” was just being hatched. And we were no longer
talking as much about how we controlled learning environments. We were
thinking about how informal learning was a legitimate enterprise, and
how in online learning environments we were merging informal, learner-
directed learning with formal, institution- directed teaching.
So just when educators were getting comfortable with some dated
assumptions behind distance education, informal online learning was
flourishing and shaking up those ideas. But change doesn’t magically
happen when new ideas emerge. Formal learning and its doppelg nger,
non- formal learning (which uses formal learning conventions and
structures, but learners have control of how they consume or particäipate),
FOREWORD: AN ATTENDANT POSTURE ix
are still comfortably embedded in institutional distance education.
Universities struggle with which LMS they should adopt, but too few
conversations are held about how courses are designed and delivered,
and almost nobody talks about mashups of formal and informal learning.
Some instructors, designers, and courses are innovative; some look a lot
like they did when they arrived in mailboxes as correspondence courses
in 1980. Informal online learning exists, as authors in this volume suggest,
in uncomfortable opposition to formal learning, not as a cohabitant of the
same learning space.
Of course, there are more pragmatic forces at work too. In a learning
ecology that invites innovation and change, and apparently demands it,
why do organizations apparently hold so tenaciously to fairly traditional
and conservative approaches to distance education? Garrison rightly
observes that theoretical development in distance education has stalled,
and I would also suggest that programmatic innovation has been slowed
too (not stalled, but slowed). A few years ago, I argued that competition,
growth, and accountability were corrosive influences in higher education,
and I could say the same thing about distance education today. Institutions
in higher education have been driven into competition with other
institutions by severe financial constraints and a concomitant demand to
increase enrollments. Yes, some institutions are imperialistic and predatory,
but most “encroach on the territory” of other institutions because they
recognize a need to expand in an environment of shrinking resources –
not because they are expressing an altruistic belief in social change and
equity. Their learning economies demand growth and distance educa-
tion has been seen as a convenient approach to extending the reach of
programs. And in this book, we see some of these tensions play out in the
critical views Kanuka and others bring to the conversation.
There seems to be a reciprocal conversation/t ension between structures
of education and the unequal movements of society(ies). It’s complex, of
course, and almost unimaginably so. But as Matheos and Cleveland-I nnes
argue, we require outside views to challenge our conventions, and help us
navigate meaningful, responsive change. I applaud this observation, and
underscore that those conversations need to include philosophers, poets,
and artists – people who deliberately challenge the science- bias of so many
of our approaches.
So I’d have to agree with Garrison (2009) that distance education
theory has stalled, and this has occurred in an environment where online
learning writ large has flourished – an atheoretical learning ecology.
Formal institutional learning is a castle keep; informal online learning is a
juggernaut. We are challenged to unify these movements, not in order to
create a “unified theory of distance education,” but rather to move theory