“To neglect where we have been hinders our understanding of where we want to go” (as cited in Bunker, 2003, p. 63). This is one of my favorite quotes with its very simple but insightful message: the future is built upon the shoulders of the past. Thus, if we try to understand the problems and questions in online education and propose the best solutions to them, we first need to understand the historical roots underlying these problems and questions. Given that, I would like to invite you to take a very fast exploration of the historical evolution of online distance education as an attempt to address a very important problem we are facing in today research, design, implementation, and teaching praxis of online education: Inclusiveness.
The first distance education initiatives started in 1873 with the correspondence education. The main purpose of these initiatives was to encourage women to learn variety of subjects at home without hindering their domestic responsibilities. The learners were connected with the well-educated female members of the society, and provided with the instructional materials via mail (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006). This revolutionary attempt aimed to democratize education to certain degree so that a less represented group of learners, i.e. women, can be less marginalized in formal education. Later, the scope of these initiatives was expanded to include a larger group of learners who were not able to access to the traditional educational opportunities due to financial, geographical, and social reasons, and aimed to provide vocational and just-in-time educational opportunities as university extension, self-improvement movements (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006; Wedemeyer, 1981). The main motive of the initiatives is still democratizing educational opportunities for the marginalized and least-represented groups of learners. With the emerging mass media technologies, i.e. radio, TV, and etc., the focus shifted from democratization of education to distributing the educational materials to mass learners since the financial potential of such mass education was realized (Saba, 2003). Research initiatives in this domain started to explore how individuals could be supported to be more independent learners so as to improve the learning outcomes (see Transactional Distance Theory) (Moore, 2013). Later, with the emerging teleconferencing technologies, the idea of social learning started to dominate the research and practical visions for the online distance learning experiences, and with the internet, the social constructive approach shifted towards a more connected and community building-focused approach (Anderson & Dron, 2011). The globalization and fast enhancing technology have offered several opportunities such as being able to reach out to a larger target learner from all around the world, and creating multicultural learning communities that also afford personalized learning experiences. In order to survive in this fast moving and changing globalization process, universities try their best to adapt all the shiny technological tools, and diversify their learner profiles. But the question of whether they are ready for such multicultural learner profile remains to be seen.
What this very brief reading of the historical evolution of online distance education suggests is quite simple: learning is no more an individual-level activity but more a collective activity of a community, and it is not a simple community of similar learners; it is a community composed of diverse groups of learners with different characteristics in terms of age, sexuality, gender, culture, language, geography, and etc. Thus, the idealistic vision to democratize the educational opportunities for less-represented and marginalized groups of learners has become a must to survive in this very competitive market created by the globalization act. The scholar and practitioner focus has shifted towards how to make this diversity feel welcomed to the online learning context design and developed in a sense that they would feel a part of the community (Hew, 2015).
There have been promising attempts to address how to design online learning experiences that afford such diversity but these attempts are still in their preliminary phases, thus requiring further research and practical initiatives and explorations (Phirangee & Malec, 2017). The research findings suggest that learners are fundamentally changing their roles in online learning experience from passive receivers to social beings who would like to socially and emotionally connect to other members of the learning community, interact with them, and co-construct knowledge collectively (Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007). However, the differences in cultural, social and personal beliefs, views, values and norms, personal experiences, responsibilities, and characteristics, and so forth have been proven to impact the social, epistemic and emotional communication among learners within this community, and thus, causing several problems such as isolation, lack of social connectedness, dropouts, and so forth. So, the question that we need to seek to answer is how to tailor our instructional and design strategies that will moderate the diverse characteristics of the learner community aimed to be developed in our online courses in such a way that no one will feel excluded or “other’ed” (Phirangee & Malec, 2017; Rovai, 2002). We see that the notion of democratization is not providing the educational resources to individual learners anymore. The internet is full of information and knowledge that can be accessed at anytime from anywhere. Thus, the democratization notion has changed its form in the current online education context, and aims to address how to create an inclusive learning community so that everyone will feel welcomed. This new form suggests that the focus should not be the content delivery to the marginalized groups of learners, but should be developing inclusive social communities for all groups of learners.
I know the post is longer than expected but I would like to close my remarks with asking the following questions for further consideration: If the historical evolution and the current status of online distance education depict this clear image for the desired vision for online learning experiences, why do not we listen to them? Why do we still focus on how integrate shiny technological objects to deliver content? Do learners really need to access to huge chunks of content?
References
Anderson, K., & May, F. A. (2010). Does the method of instruction matter? An experimental examination of information literacy instruction in the online, blended, and face-to-face classrooms. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 36(6), 495-500.
Bunker, E. L. (2003). The History of Distance Education through the Eyes of the International Council for Distance Education. In M. G. Moore, & W. G. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp. 49-66). New Jersey, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Garrison, D. R., & Arbaugh, J. B. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions. The Internet and Higher Education, 10(3), 157-172.
Hew, K. F. (2015). Student perceptions of peer versus instructor facilitation of asynchronous online discussions: further findings from three cases. Instructional Science, 43(1), 19-38.
Larreamendy-Joerns, J., & Leinhardt, G. (2006). Going the distance with online distance education. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 567-605.
Moore, M. (2013). The theory of transactional distance. In M. G. Moore (3rd Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp. 66-85). New York, NY: Routledge.
Phirangee, K., & Malec, A. (2017). Othering in online learning: An examination of social presence, identity, and sense of community. Distance Education, 38(2), 160-172.
Rovai, A. P. (2002). Building sense of community at a distance. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 3(1).
Saba, F. (2003). Distance education theory, methodology, and epistemology: A pragmatic paradigm. In M. G. Moore, & W. G. Anderson (Eds), Handbook of distance education (pp. 3-20). New Jersey, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wedemeyer, C. A. (1981). Learning at the back door: Reflections on non-traditional learning in the lifespan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.