Chapter 7 in Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching discussed the positive and negative impacts of Distance Learning on education reform. According to Russell (1992), students who are learning through instructional television have the same achievement as those learning through face to face instruction. Russell (1997) later found that there was no overall difference in learning by distance learning courses or face to face courses. I find these results may be biased. Russell did not report the age group that he studied for distance learning achievement. Roblyer and Marshall (2002-2003) did state that students who take online or distance courses need to be more self-motivated and have better organization skills than students who take face to face courses. This technology class that we are in now is considered a distance learning class because our classwork is done at our convenience, and we do not have face to face meetings.
I think Russell studied graduate students when he was researching the effectiveness of distance education on achievement. Graduate students for the most part are already self-motivated, or they would not pursue a higher degree in education. If Russell's research is based on graduate students, I would have to believe that his findings are not valid. I prefer the face to face instruction better than distance learning. I did my undergraduate studies at Birmingham-Southern College where the class sizes were very small in the education department. We had 10-15 students in a class, which allowed for better teacher/student and student/student relationships to develop. Distance Learning courses minimize relationships, which I believe is crucial to learning.
The Internet was very new in 1997 when Russell did his research. I did not even have email in 1997, much less know what distance learning was about. The textbook also mentions that distance learning is becoming popular for home school students K-12. I do not think that elementary aged students are capable of being self-motivated enough to benefit from distance learning. Self-motivated and organized elementary aged students are RARE!
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I agree with you that students that particiapte in distance learning types of situations need to be more self-motivated and better organized than the typical run-of-the-mill student. As I mentioned in my own blog, I have had a really hard time keeping myself on track for this "distance learning" class. I forget to check the Blackboard and have forgotten to blog a couple of times. You have to be able to make a comittment to yourself and the instructor to effectively participate in formal distance learning situations! Lyn Hopkins
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