Distance Teaching and Technology-Mediated Learning: A Brief Discussion [*]
Eduardo O C Chaves
Abstract - After a brief introduction, where the various technologies (lato sensu) used in education are reviewed, it is argued, first, that the expression “Distance Teaching” is more adequate than the expressions “Distance Education” and “Distance Learning”, and should therefore be preferred. A comparison of Distance Teaching and Computer-Mediated Learning is then introduced. In the sequence, the main arguments for Distance Teaching are presented and a comparison of the relative merits of Face-to-Face Teaching and Distance Teaching is presented. A criticism of educational models centered on teaching (face-to-face or remote) is then made in order to prepare the way for the argument that education, in the future, will have to centered on the learner, not on the teacher, on learning processes, not on teaching methods, on “push” more than on “pull”, and that it will be inevitably technology-mediated. It is finally argued that the school, created, as it was, to produce standardized output (basically identical and interchangeable students), is ill-equipped to help rather diverse students in a personalized and individualized manner, as is necessary in our culture today. Its role may be occupied by rich learning environments that will inevitably make use of networked resources and computer-mediated communications.
Index Terms - Distance Teaching, Technology-Mediated Learning, New Educational Paradigms
I. Technology in Education
II.
Distance Education, Distance Learning, and Distance Teaching
III. Technology-Mediated Learning
IV. The Justification of
Distance Teaching
1. Are Face-to-face and Distance Teaching Equivalent?
2. Does Distance Teaching Offer Advantages vis-à-vis Face-to-face Teaching?A. Reach
B. Cost/Benefit Ratio
C. Flexibility
D. Personalization and Individualization
V. Technology-Mediated
Learning: A New Model
I. Technology in Education
A variety of expressions is normally employed to refer to the use of human
artifacts, methods and techniques in education. I prefer the expression
“technology in education” to refer to the general category that includes the use
of every form of technology used in education (hard and soft, including human
speech, writing, printing, curricula, programs, chalk and blackboards, and, more
recently, photography, cinema, radio, television, video, and, naturally,
computers and the Internet). I recognize that nowadays, when the expression
“Technology in Education” is used, hardly anyone thinks of chalk and blackboards
or even of books and magazines. Attention is normally concentrated on the
computer, because it became the point of convergence of all the more recent
technologies. And especially after the explosive commercial success of the
Internet, computers are hardly ever thought as standalone equipment: the network
became the computer. It is sensible, however, to remind educators that human
speech, writing, and, consequently, lectures, books and magazines, not to
mention curricula and programs, are technology, and that, therefore, educators
have been using various technologies all along. It is only their familiarity
with these technologies that somehow makes them transparent (i.e., invisible) to
them.
II.
Distance Education, Distance Learning, and Distance Teaching
Of these three expressions the third is, I believe, the least used – and yet, it
is the only one that is correct, in my view. Education and learning are
processes that take place within the individual – there is no way that education
and learning can occur remotely or at a distance. Education and learning occur
wherever the person is – the person is, in central and very important ways, the
subject of the educational and learning process, not its object. So, I see no
way in which we can have “tele-education” or “tele-learning”. It is perfectly
possible, however, to teach remotely or at a distance. It happens all the time.
Saint Paul taught, from a distance, the Christian faithful who were in Rome,
Corinth, etc. – using handwritten letters. Authors, distant in space and in
time, teach their readers through printed books and articles. Various teams of
people can teach others through motion pictures, television and video. And,
today, we can teach anyone, any place through the Internet. So, I conclude, we
should prefer the expression “Distance Teaching” whenever we want to refer to
the act of teaching remotely or a distance. That education and learning can
happen as a result of this teaching is undeniable, but, as argued, this should
not lead us into thinking that the education and the learning taking place as a
result of remote or distance teaching is occurring remotely or at a distance.
III. Technology-Mediated Learning
It seems to me, however, that Distance Teaching is not the best application of
technology in education today. This place should be reserved to what I prefer to
call Technology-Mediated Learning.
As I mentioned at the end of the last section, there is no doubt that education
and learning can occur as a result of teaching. But neither is there doubt that
education can occur through self-learning, i.e., the kind of learning that is
not associated with a process of teaching but that occurs through our
interaction with nature, with other people, and with the cultural world. A large
portion of our learning takes place in this form, and according to some
researchers, learning that takes place in this form is more significant – that
is, happens more easily, is retained longer and is more naturally transferred to
other domain and contexts – than learning that occurs as a result of formal and
deliberate teaching processes (i.e., through instruction). What is especially
fascinating in the new technologies at our disposal, particularly in the
Internet, and, within it, in the Web, is not that with their help we can teach
at a distance, but that they allow us to create rich learning environments in
which persons who are interested and motivated can learn almost anything without
having to fall victims of a process of formal and deliberate teaching. Learning,
in this case, is mediated by technology alone.
There is no doubt that behind the technology there are other persons, who
prepare the materials and make them available in the net. When someone uses the
resources now available in the Internet in order to learn in self-motivated,
exploratory fashion, he uses materials of different natures, prepared and made
available in the most widely diverse contexts, not rarely without any
pedagogical intent, and he does it in a order that is totally unpredictable, and
that therefore cannot be planned, and in a rhythm that is totally personal and
regulated only by the desire to learn and the capacity to assimilate and digest
what he finds.
Because of this I do not think it is viable to call this experience Distance
Teaching, as if it were the Internet that taught, or as if it were the people
behind the materials that taught. What is taking place in a context such as the
one described is Technology-Mediated Learning, self-learning, that is, learning
that is not the result of teaching.
I propose, therefore, that the main categories in which we can classify the
possible uses of technology in education are:
In support of Face-to-Face Teaching
In support of Distance Teaching
In support of Self-Learning
The first category does not
interest us here. We will therefore concentrate our attention on the second and
third categories.
IV. The Justification of
Distance Teaching
Many people might feel inclined to justify Distance Teaching by simply asking:
“Why not?” However, there are good reasons to discuss whether distance teaching
is justified, what justifies it, and what its merits are relative to
Face-to-Face Teaching. On the one hand there are those that assume that Distance
Teaching does not substantially differ from Face-to-Face Teaching. If teaching
is good, and it is possible to teach at a distance, then we should do it.
On the other hand there are those who see advantages in Distance Teaching in
comparison to Face-to-Face Teaching: greater reach, better cost/benefit ratio,
and, mainly, greater flexibility (for both teachers and learners), since they
believe Distance Teaching can become so personalized as to become individualized
instruction.
Over against these two favorable positions there are those who think that in
Distance Teaching one loses the personal dimension that, even though not
necessary for teaching itself, seems essential to effective teaching.
1. Are
Face-to-face and Distance Teaching Equivalent?
Leaving aside, for the moment, the second position, there is an obvious
contradiction between the first and the third position, since defenders of the
first assume that there are no substantive differences between Face-to-Face and
Distance Teaching (the “virtual” character of Distance Teaching not being
considered essential) while defenders of the third position believe that the
“virtuality” (or remote character) of Distance Teaching removes from the
teaching relation something important, or even essential, to it, namely, its
personal character, which, according to them, is what makes teaching effective.
Who is in the right in this dispute?
I tend to agree more, but in a qualified manner, with the first position.
Teaching involves three elements: the teacher, the learner and that which the
teacher teaches the learner (the “content”). For the teacher to teach the
content to the learner it is no longer necessary, today, that they should both
be in spatial-temporal contiguity – that is, that they share the same space at
the same time. Socrates insisted (against writing-based teaching) that
spatial-temporal contiguity between teacher and learner is essential to teaching
– but only because he did not know, and could not even imagine, contemporary
telecommunications. Because of this, he claimed that distance teaching (in his
case, writing-based teaching) prevented dialogue, questioning and answering,
real personal communication between the agents involved (teacher and learner).
His argument obviously does not apply today. The personal character of a
relationship, today, is independent of physical proximity in space and time. It
is possible, nowadays, to maintain extremely personal – even rather intimate –
relationships at a distance, using modern means of distance communication,
involving text, sound, image (static and dynamic). On the other hand, mere
spatial-temporal contiguity is not guarantee of truly personal relationships.
The very large classrooms that exist in some schools often lead to a highly
impersonal relationship between teacher and learners, despite their proximity in
space and time. Many times, in these contexts, the teacher does not even know
the name of the students, and is totally ignorant of their personal
characteristics, which are highly relevant to effective teaching. This said, I
have to introduce a qualification in my defense of the first position. Other
things being equal, face-to-face, eye-to-eye communication allows for more
effective teaching than does remote communication, even when the most modern
means of distance communication are employed. In face-to-face communication one
can rather easily detect the nuances of non-verbal sound expressions (the tone,
pitch and volume of the voice, the rhythm of the speech, the pauses, the subtle
emphases) and of body language (especially facial expressions [in which eye
contact is perhaps the most significant aspect], but also posture, hand, arm and
leg position, the possibility of touch and other forms of physical contact,
etc.).
(This consideration is important for something that I intend to show below,
namely: if a model of teaching does not work under the best conditions, what
makes us expect that it will work when conditions are not so favorable?)
2. Does Distance Teaching Offer Advantages vis-à-vis Face-to-face Teaching?
Let us consider, now, the second position described above, namely, that there
are advantages to Distance Teaching in relation to Face-to-Face Teaching. If
this thesis is correct, the advantages of Distance Teaching may compensate the
disadvantage to which attention has just been called.
We said, before, that the defenders of the thesis that Distance Teaching is more
effective than Face-to-Face teaching point to its greater reach, its better cost/benefit
ratio, its greater flexibility (both to teachers and learners), and to its
greater potential for personalization and even individualization.
A. Reach
There is no doubt that Distance Teaching has greater reach than Face-to-Face
Teaching. A program of Distance Teaching such as Brazil’s TeleCurso 2000 reaches
millions of people each time it is ministered (broadcast) – infinitely more than
could be reached if the same course were taught face-to-face.
B. Cost/Benefit Ratio
Here the question is not so easily decided.
The cost of developing (producing) quality distance teaching programs (that
involve, for instance, television, or even video, or specialized software) is
extremely high.
Besides this, the cost of delivery can also be reasonably high. If these
programs are broadcast through commercial television networks, delivery costs
can even be higher than development and production costs – with the added
disadvantage that delivery costs are recurring, not one-time costs. Because of
this, these Distance Teaching programs only offer a favorable cost/benefit ratio
if their reach is really great (reaching, for instance, over one million persons).
It is true that development costs can be divided by the various deliveries of
the program. A quality Distance Teaching program can be delivered literally
hundreds or thousands of times while its development costs remains the same. The
only overall cost component affected by the recurring delivery of the program is
its delivery cost, a fact that makes its development costs/delivery costs ratio
proportionally lower as the number of deliveries increases. If the number of
deliveries is not high, however, this reduction in the ratio may not be
significant.
Many of the institutions interested in Distance Teaching today are searching for
“shortcuts” that will reduce development costs. Unfortunately, these are rarely
found without reduction in quality. Instead of using costly communication means
such as television and video, these institutions are using predominantly text in
the development of the programs and primarily the Internet (Web and e-mail) in
its delivery (so reducing both the cost of development and the cost of delivery).
In addition, lest development costs are increased, the text components are
adapted from texts previously published and not prepared with the Web in view.
The result is that these Distance Teaching programs are little more than
correspondence courses delivered through the Internet instead of through the
conventional post. It is true that these institutions try to add some value to
the texts made available through the Web offering the learners opportunities of
synchronous communication with the author of the texts and with each other
through dedicated chats. But chats are quite ineffective for this sort of
exchange when many people take part in it.
When Distance Teaching is understood basically as a process of making written
texts available through the Web and following this with discussion through
e-mail e chats, it is not difficult to believe that its cost/benefit ratio will
be more favorable when compared to that of Face-to-Face Teaching.
It is important to register here that if the texts thus made available are
prepared specifically for the Web, being therefore enriched with structures such
as links (hypertext), annotations, commentaries, glossaries, navigation maps,
etc., then the efficacy of Distance Teaching can be greatly increased. But this
means that teaching materials will have to be rewritten, with the consequent
increase in cost.
C. Flexibility
Given the fact that distance teaching can use both synchronous and asynchronous
communication, there is no doubt that, especially when the latter are employed,
teachers and learners have greater flexibility to define the amount of time and
the schedule that they are going to use for the course. Web pages, databases,
e-mail are all available 24 hours per day seven days a week, and so can be
accessed according to the greatest convenience of the user.
D. Personalization and
Individualization
It is here that the defenders of Distance Teaching place greater emphasis. Here
is what Octavi Roca says, in his article “Education Technologies in Educational
Processes” (in Toward an Educational Technology, edited by Juana M. Sancho (ArtMed,
Porto Alegre, RS, BR,1998): "Most education professionals are aware of the fact
that individuals are different from one another, have different needs,
objectives, cognitive styles, etc., and that, therefore, each individual uses
the learning opportunities that are offered to him in way that is most adequate
to his needs, objective, learning style, etc. . . . Thus, it is obvious that
teaching must be adapted to all these factors. We have known this for a long
time. These differences have always been acknowledged. But, before, they were
seen as problems to be eliminated – a difficulty for the teacher. . . . Now,
however, we have the means to organize our teaching in full recognition of the
fact that the diverse capacities of each person represent a great richness and
that teaching must start from that. . . . The end result of this recognition is
that teaching will be more and more adapted to each person in particular”
[p.185]. Is it possible to implement these desirable features in Face-to-Face
Teaching as it takes place in the school? Maybe – but it seems very difficult,
unless the school be somehow reinvented. Let us see.
School, as we know it, cannot really take into account the different needs,
interests and learning styles of the learners and offer each of them
personalized and individualized teaching because this kind of teaching comes
into collision with a basic assumption of the school: standardization and
uniformity.
To expect that the school will provide personalized and individualized teaching is equivalent to expecting that a conventional automobile assembly line will produce cars that are personalized to the individual needs and desires of the customers. This will not work. The assembly line, as we know it, was invented to standardize, to allow that identical cars be made with speed and efficiency. The school, likewise, was created to do something similar in relation to its students. Its model is the assembly line. Its end was to be the production of individuals that, from an educational viewpoint, were as standardized and interchangeable as the automobiles produced in an assembly line. If the students preserve some degree of individuality at the end of their schooling, this will be in spite of the school, not because of its work.
The educational model (or
paradigm) appropriate for the school is centered on the transmission of
information, from the teacher to the learner, through teaching.
This model is outdated – and it is not difficult to see why. This model is
centered on teaching. Teaching is a triadic activity that involves the teacher,
the learner (“teachee”), and the content that the former teaches to the latter.
Because of this the school gives priority to the content to be transmitted (the
curriculum), and, consequently, to the transmitter (the teacher), leaving the
learner in the last place – his task is merely to absorb whatever is transmitted
to him. Because of this, the school is typically centered on contents and
teachers – whereas the opposing tendency described above is centered on the
learner (adapted to his needs, interests, cognitive style and learning rhythm).
What is defective in this conventional model is not the fact that it takes place
face-to-face: it is the fact that it is not flexible enough to allow for
students with different needs, interests, cognitive styles and learning rhythms.
Can personalized and
individualized education be implemented through Distance Teaching?
If the model employed for Distance Teaching programs is the same used for
Face-to-Face Teaching, we will end up having Distance Teaching programs that do
not differ substantially from their face-to-face counterparts.
If we know that this model no longer works, even in optimal communication
conditions, where the teacher can communicate face-to-face, eye-to-eye with the
learner, why should we expect that it will work in contexts where teacher and
learner have to communicate in sub-optimal conditions, as it is the case in
Distance Teaching?
Personally, I am not interested in repeating, virtually or remotely, the errors
of a model that no longer works in its face-to-face implementation. I am
interested in a different model or paradigm.
V. Technology-Mediated
Learning: A New Model
The model of education that will become prevalent in the information society
will probably not be centered on teaching, face-to-face or remote: it will be
centered on learning. Consequently, it will not be Distance Teaching – it will
probably be something like Technology-Mediated Learning. This model will have to
make provision for the different needs, interests, cognitive style and learning
rhythms of the learners. Whoever wants to participate in a non-learner role in
this model will have to make available, not Distance Teaching modules, but rich
learning environments to which anyone can come and and in which anyone can learn.
The Internet and the Web, or whatever comes after them, will have a fundamental role in this process.
The Internet is rapidly becoming,
through the Web, a repository for every sort of information that is made public.
Because of this, people will be coming to the Web to satisfy their information
needs. The prevailing model, from now on, will not be some (the teachers)
transmitting information to others (the learners) but many (students, workers,
anyone who needs it) coming in search of information in places where they know
they can find it (the Web). In Internet terms, it will be more “pull” than “push”.
The task of discussing, analyzing, evaluating, and applying this information to
practical tasks will be, more and more, performed, not through the school, but
through specialized virtual discussion groups, where everyone can alternate in
teaching and learning roles. What is virtual here is the group, not the learning:
this will be real enough to satisfy most people’s learning needs. If the school
can reinvent itself and become a learning environment of this type, it may
survive. But make no mistake about it: the Internet, the Web, e-mail, chats,
text-based discussions, video conferences, etc., will have to be in the center
of it. What is said of the school here applies to schools of every level,
including universities.
An example of a learning environment of this type is the discussion group EduTec
and the site EduTecNet, which I set up and coordinate to discuss the use of
technology in education. Its URL is
http://www.edutecnet.com.br.
[*] Invited paper
for ICECE99 – International Congress on Engineering and Computer Education, Rio
de Janeiro, August 1999, published in the Proceedings of the Congress. Also
published "Educational Technology (i)" in The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of
Education / A Enciclopédia de Filosofia de Educação, edited by Michael A. Peters
and Paulo Ghiraldelli Júnior,
http://www.educacao.pro.br/ (specifically at
http://www.educacao.pro.br/technology.htm )
(c) 1999 by Eduardo Chaves
Last revised: 02 May 2004