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Appendix I - What is Distance Education?

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According to Keegan (1996, p. 37), the terms “distance teaching” and “distance learning” are each only half of the process of distance education. When used in this handbook, the term “distance learning” refers to both the teaching and learning processes and is interchangeable with the term “distance education”.

Distance learning is a general term used to cover a range of teaching and learning events in which the student is separated from the teacher and, usually, other fellow students. As Moore & Kearsley (2005) explain:

Distance education is teaching and planned learning in which teaching normally occurs in a different place from learning, requiring communication through technologies as well as special institutional organisation. (p. 2)

Defined by the University of Otago Senate (April 2003), a “distance paper” at Otago is one taught in such a way that, with the exception of a short residential component and/or attendance at audio and video conference sessions in some cases, regular attendance at one of the University’s campus centres is not expected.

Although the general characteristics of distance education have remained the same over time, the way in which distance courses have been taught has changed substantially. Rumble (2001) proposed that distance education has evolved historically through four phases or “generations”:

  • the Correspondence phase, based on print technology;
  • the Broadcasting phase, where radio and television were used extensively
  • the Multi-media phase, based on print as well telecommunications technologies such as audio- and video conferencing;
  • the World Wide Web phase, based online via the Internet.

Rumble also identified five key changes that have occurred in the last 30 years or so:

  • technology underpinning all four distinct phases of distance education;
  • a pedagogical shift from a transmission model of education towards a constructivist model incorporating computer-mediated communication;
  • growing acceptance of distance education, and its expansion;
  • a change of perception of distance learning, from low status to acceptance, with increased confidence that methods are adopted across education as a whole;
  • evolution from an essentially modernist form of education into a post-modernist phenomenon with a focus on the student as consumer, on flexibility and global reach.

(Adapted from Rumble, p. 31)

Distance? Online?

With the global pandemic, 2020 has seen everyone teach increasingly or exclusively online. At Otago, we differentiate between "emergency online/remote teaching" and formally approved distance learning papers.

Our formally approved distance papers naturally do use online mechanisms for teaching, but the thinking behind distance papers goes far beyond the technology used to teach and to learn. There is a strong recognition of the geographical distance between teachers and students, and how that affects teaching and learning.

References

Keegan, D. (1996). Foundations of distance education. (3rd Ed.) New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view of online learning. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Rumble, G. (2001). Reinventing distance education, 1971 – 2001. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20(1/2), 31-43, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370010008246.