The Death of Distance Education; Long Live Distributive Learning * - 1993

In 1993, near the dawn of the increasingly-public internet, with some enthusiasm about the way that computer-mediated communication might transform teaching and learning, I presented the following opinion piece.  

I think my viewpont was not really incorrect, but it presumed that computer-mediated communication would be a potential egalitarian force in the world -- for utility, if not also for good. 

Unfortunately, the realization of what I forecast seems to have turned out to be what we now call "social media". What I did not foresee was that while the positive potential I had presumed remains, what has happened is that much of the learning has been focused on mis and dis-information. 

My 1993 Viewpoint 

Introduction 

In presenting this article, I have two objectives: 

to conjure an alternative perspective to the conventional notion of distance education, 

and to think about some implications of this altered perspective. 

 I approach this subject as an adult educator. What I mean by this is that when I think of education, I am seldom thinking of "kids;" and I am never thinking only of learning which takes place in conventional institutional settings. 

Adult educators often take for their focus: learning and the adult learner, as opposed, say, to: instructional design, educational technology, program planning, curriculum design, effective teaching, and the like. 

Hence, what I have to say is driven by images of potentially autonomous learners, extremely diverse learning needs, and an interest in paying attention to learning opportunities wherever they may present themselves. 

 Technological Change 

In reflecting upon the explosion of the first atomic bomb, someone is reputed to have said: "That day, everything in the world changed except one thing -- our minds." The idea of the intransigent mind in the face of revolution -- particularly of technological revolution -- is the key theme of this article. 

I find a good deal of food for thought in Neil Postman's (1992) recent work, Technopoly. Postman suggests we need to be wary of the pervasive -- perhaps omnipotent -- presence of technology in our lives. Humankind is not unfamiliar with technological innovation which changes the very nature of how we conduct our day-to-day lives, and which, in some cases, has changed our very understanding of our collective and personal place in the cosmos. 

A brief and selective list of such technological innovations might be as follows: the wheel, the written word, the telescope, the printing press, the school, the telephone, the automobile, television, the atomic bomb, the computer. Each of these is an example of a change in technological capacity which, over time, has fundamentally altered our sense of our collective and individual lives. 

To my thinking, each of these changes, in a curiously paradoxical way, has been both instantaneous and ploddingly slow. The technological innovation, itself, arises relatively quickly. At one moment the capacity does not exist; in the next moment, at some level, the "know-how" is present and available. 

A point in time like the Wright brothers' 1903 first successful flight in a self-propelled heavier-than-air craft gives some sense of what I mean. For example, imagine two bystanders at the first powered flight of the Wrights' wire and fabric craft. One turns to the other and says, "Well, I am looking forward to watching that first manned lunar landing!" Not very likely. 

At the same time as a transition in technological capacity takes place, it often is extremely difficult for those present to imagine with any precision the particular effects of the change upon the future conduct of human affairs. This aspect of the change requires a change in mind. If people reflect on such matters at all, often the assumption is that the new technique simply will be assimilated into current practice. In 1890, who would have imagined 1990s cities as being shaped in so large a part by the presence of the automobile? That which was a technological curiosity -- a toy for the wealthy -- has come to shape the social and economic fabric of North America, perhaps of the globe. 

Computer-Mediated Communication 

Let us take a moment to pay attention to a technologically- based revolution which I assert has already taken place, but which has yet to take full form -- communication mediated by computer. By computer mediated communication, I am referring to using the linkages among computers to obtain world-wide access to computer data bases and world-wide (virtually-instant, but also asynchronous) communication between and among groups and individuals who have access to such computers. It seems to me that the rise of computer mediated communication ought now to cause us to think less about that which we traditionally have called "distance education" -- essentially, the educational act of "packaging" and "delivering" knowledge or information to somewhere else. 

Conventionally, the act and concept of distance education is about producing and delivering/transmitting information and knowledge from a "centre" to locations at a physical distance from the centre. The notion of distance education is premised on an absence of proximity. The conventional conceptualization is one of "knowledge centres" being involved in "outreach," "delivering" a commodity or a product, called education, to people who have the "misfortune" of not being located at, or in proximity to, the centre. Distance educators talk about: "preparing learning packages," "delivery systems," "learning systems" and such. 

In the face of the potential for computer mediated communication as a tool for learning, the conventional orientations to distance education really appear to represent earlier-century educational thinking -- children of the 19th century and earlier: correspondence education; itinerancy, mastered by Methodist ministers on horseback in mid-to-late 1700 England; in the early years of this century, on behalf of a newly-formed University of Alberta, educators were touring the rural areas of the prairies and presenting talks with illuminated slide shows. Today's distance education practices seem little more than echos of these earlier educational innovations. The use of trendy technology such as compressed video or computer-assisted instruction has done little to change the fundamental pre-20th century nature of such activities -- the ways we think about teaching and learning. 

In what perhaps is an effort at 1990 double-speak, some educators have begun to use the term distance learning as a synonym for distance education. This has a superficial tone of change, but I am suggesting that the essential processes remain traditional. 

My thesis is that LEARNING is only ever done at a distance when thought about from the point of view of the EDUCATOR, or from the point of view of some sort of central-warehouse, resource provider, an earlier-century perspective of educator as knowledge-source. To me then, a phrase such as "learning at a distance," is inappropriate and old fashioned, physically -- if not technologically -- incorrect.

 Distributive Learning 

 In thinking about computer mediated communication, am thinking of what, in the title to this article, I am calling distributive learning. I see the notion of distributive learning as a sub-set of the concept "open learning" -- although open learning often is conceptualized and operationalized in a manner which, to me, looks much like the conventional "packaging" & "delivering" model of distance education. 

As an idea, distributive learning perhaps is most appropriately linked with the technology of computer mediated communication. The conceptualization of learning as distributed, (indeed, of knowledge as distributed) is one of individuals and collections of individuals -- through the medium of the computer -- reaching toward each other, to support each others' learning. As opposed to the conventional, centre-out distance education perspective, the notion of distributive learning is one of the teaching learning act as de-centred. 

If the learning act remains centred at all, it is centred in each learner. Curriculum is not something prepared and delivered; in a sense, each person becomes her or his own curriculum. Each person is an autonomous, but connected, learner. 

From this perspective, learning mediated by computer communication is never done at a distance; it is done -- to coin a phrase -- all over the place! 

For me, then, the notion of distributive learning has two key elements: 

1) to construe learning as an attribute of learners and to be proximal to the learner, regardless of the learners' physical location; and  

2) a sense of knowledge and information as de-centred, although perhaps, clustered. 

Communication mediated by a computer is about making available a medium for being linked or for being connected; it is not about physical (or, perhaps, even temporal) proximity in any conventional sense. In distributive learning, a concern for being in physical proximity to any resources other than the computer terminal drops away. 

 Implications 

 A computer-mediated network such as the Internet now gives me access, at home, to almost any resources I can imagine that I might require for cognitive development of any kind. The microcomputer on my desk, and its connection to the Internet, represents a world-wide resource which is not "delivered" to me, but which I have the good fortune "to be in touch with." Quite literally, I am now able to "reach over" and to "touch" many of the learning resources I desire. I can do this almost more easily than I am able to go to my refrigerator and get a glass of milk. I do this every day -- now!  So, I think, do some of you! 

In such circumstances, there is a potential power shift, from the educator to the learner. The traditional distance educator role, that of packager and deliverer, becomes altered, perhaps looking more like the role of archivist or public librarian. 

In a sense, the world of computer mediated communication is already full of such facilitators; we call them bulletin board sysops. On the Internet, they are list owners, Gopher developers, creators of Archie and Veronica, World Wide Web, and the like. 

These educators are working in the realm of the potentiality of the teaching/learning act integrated into the everyday activity of all of us. These educators work in relation to a medium which can be supportive of learning, but a medium which really ought not to be confused with the teaching or learning acts as they conventionally have been construed by educators who operate with an earlier-century way of thinking. 

With the advent of a communication linkage such as the Internet, if, as educators, we are going to engage in packaging and delivery, we ought now to pay most of our attention to packaging and delivering the medium -- access to the connecting network(s). We also ought to be supportive of connecting potential and existing resources to the network(s); and this includes assisting individuals to be connected with each other. 

In a world of distributive learning, the teaching role might be like the role of the farmer in planting a crop. The farmer brings together the nutrients and the seed; having played that role, the farmer will have little influence on the way in which any particular seed does or does not make use of the available resources. In some sense, it is already beyond the point of mattering whether we in traditional educational settings are happy about the change -- already it is upon us! 

Today, the world of education has changed; when and how will we change our minds? 

* From the newsletter of the Quebec Association for Adult Education, 1993 

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Concordia University Department of Education, International Symposium on Distance Education, November 1993. 

 References 

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An internet primer for information professionals. Westport, CT.: Meckler. Lewis, R. & Spencer, D. (1986). 

What is open learning? London: Council for Educational Technology. Lynch, D.C. & Marshall, T.R. (Eds.) (1993). 

Internet system handbook. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). 

No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Postman, N. (1992). 

Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Thorpe, M. & Grugeon, D. (Eds.) (1987). Open learning for adults. Harlow: Longman.