I, like many of you, had always considered distance learning as internet classes or other environments that don’t allow you to be in the same room with your classmates or instructor. I thought of distance as physically being far away from something. I am beginning to see and understand that disctance learning doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with location.
Today someone asked me about the classes I am enrolled in this semester. So I went through the whole explanation. When I tried to explain to them that I was taking a distance learning course on distance learning, things became clearer to me and much LESS clear to them. Having my original frame of mind of distance learning, I can understand the confusion in my explanation. Now I see distance education as the gap between what I want my student to understand and what they actually understand. I thought that technology was the main ingredient in distance education. But now I realize it is just a really useful tool that helps us to bridge the gap.
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I too always thought of Internet courses as distance education. However, when reading and discussing some of the other thoughts on it, I can see where all education could be considered distance education. I do think however if all education is distance than universities should be the first to start making changes in their catalogs and programs to reflect the new thinking.
Interesting point Ashley. I had never looked at distance learning from that aspect. I see how DL could be the gap between what I want students to learn verses what they actually learn, but I don’t see how that is the “distance learning”. Are you refering to learning from a distance in terms of congitive abilities or student in terms of limitations to technology (if that makes sense)? Feel free to IM me if you don’t understand my questioning.
I agree. At first I was only considering the distance thing when trying to define distance learning and distance education. After reading others post and thinking about what has been said, I am starting to realize it is more than just distance it is like you said the way we bridge the gaps of education.