Distance Learning and Education

My last post on Online Presence was starting to get overly long and complex, so I decided to omit discussing Distance learning and its affect on language learning to this separate article. Such a task reminds me of the daunting task of having to narrow down my choice of topic for our assessment at the end of the year.

Online Persona

Once of the unique things about online communication is to a reasonable extent, you are free to portray whatever persona you wish - be it yourself, how you want to others to perceive you, or someone completely different to you in real life. Like being a stranger at a party, the choice is yours to be who you want to be, with changes to your height, age, profession, even perceived intelligence all possibly going undetected. You could even be God if you so wish. However, the ability to alter or distance yourself from your online persona can be a double-edged sword, as seen in this poignant video from Shaun Highton:

What's on your mind? |  Shaun Highton | 2014

But how does the ability to create an online persona and interact with others online effect learning?

Community of Inquiry

The Community of Inquiry (COI) theoretical framework, first introduced by C.S. Pierce and John Dewey, represents a process of creating a deep and meaningful (collaborative - constructivist) learning experience through the development of three independent elements - social, cognitive and teaching presence. The COI emphasises that knowledge is necessarily embedded within a social context and thus requires intersubjective agreement amoung those involved in the process od inquiry for legitimacy. (Eteokleou - Grigoriou, N. & Photiou, S., 2014:126)

In recent years, the COI model has been utilised as a 'dynamic process designed to define, describe and measure elements supporting the development of online learning communities' (Swan, K & Ice, P. 2010:1). Garrison et al (2010:88) note that 'The model of this Community of Inquiry assumes that learning occurs within the Community through the interaction of three core elements. Fig. 1 shows the three essential elements: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence'.

Fig. 1 Garrison et al (2010:88) | The COI model

Garrison et al (2010:89) go on to note that 'social presence, is defined as the ability of participants in the Community of Inquiry to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to the other participants as "real people"'. The fact that your social presence in a group may be 'indirectly facilitating the process of critical thinking carried on by a community of learners' or even a 'direct contributor to the success of the educational experience' is enough to make you stand up and take notice of how you present yourself online in an educational setting.

It is easy to see how a more friendly and amicable group might find it easier to communicate together online, than a tense atmosphere of a group of strangers. I noted in my first post that our first meeting for DTLT on Adobe Connect was a little awkward, but now that we have built up a bit of a rapport and friendship with each other, we are chatting and communicating so much more freely now that we find ourselves quickly running out of time for discussion. This social interaction is particularly beneficial to language learning which is, in essence, a social activity.

Distance Learning and Education

Distance learning is a expanding rapidly, due its ease of access online and it's relatively cost effective nature, but are you receiving the same bang for your buck, so to speak? It was addressed in our tutorial that it is perhaps unfair to compare Distance Learning to traditional classroom education. Both offer different forms of learning, it is true, but the importance of Education is so great that questions constantly need to be asked of all aspects of it. Hubert Dreyfus (2001: 32) posed this question of Distance Learning:

"can distance learning enable students to acquire the skills they need in order to be good citizens skilled in various domains?"

Dreyfus believed that these skills were acquired in seven stages.

Simplification of the model - Credit: Online Reference

Novice and Advanced Beginner being the basic steps and learning through instructions and examples, Dreyfus (2001: 35) stated that  'learning, whether it takes place at a distance or face to face, can be carried out in a detached, analytical frame of mind' and thus mattered little if it was distance learning or not. In fact, I and many others frequently engage in this form of learning online. I follow instructions for recipes, watch how to correctly perform exercises at the gym, even video game tutorials follow this line of skills acquisition.

Reaching the stage of competence, where the student learns to pay less heed to all the rules, or he/she may become overwhelmed, and relies more on experience and decision-making rather than following a strict set of rules. Here, Dreyfus (2001: 39) concedes that 'the net's limitations where embodiment is concerned - the absence of face-to-face learning - may well leave students stuck at competence' Lucky for us, technology has now advanced such that this no longer applies, though I'm not entirely sure it applied to begin with. I completed an online TEFL course through e-mail, and though Dreyfus (2001:39) noted that in Distance Learning there was little  'possibility of taking the risk of proposing and defending and idea and finding out whether it fails or flies' I still had the opportunity to engage with my tutor and discuss our thoughts on Educational methodologies. Sam Harris, a well-known author once debated linguist Noam Chomsky over the ethics of war, via e-mail. I believe that if it is possible to put forth these opinions, and even though the person may be 'at home in front of his or her terminal' (2001:39), it doesn't necessarily make them immune from the risk felt and may still effect your learning on a personal level.

Dreyfus seems to have a very narrow viewpoint of what distance learning can be and I related more with Nigel Blake (2002: 379) in his retort to Dreyfus in that 'I do not find my own online practice described in this books, even in vague terms'. He too believed online learning had the 'potential for some form of extensive and serious intellectual and personal engagement, one-to-one if not face-to-face.'

Stage four is Proficiency, which Dreyfus (2001:40) notes as 'seems to develop if, and only if, experience is assimilated in this embodied, atheoretical way'. As noted in the above image, this entails being able to see "the bigger picture" and that 'the student at this level sees the problem that needs to be solved but has yet to figure out what the answer is"

In the next stage of Expertise Dreyfus (2001:41) notes that 'The expert not only sees what needs to be achieved; thanks to his vast repertoire of situational discriminations, he also sees immediately how to achieve his goal.'

Stage 6 is Mastery. As one goes up through the stages of skills acquisition, you can see the nuances and difference between them starting to lessen. It is hard to see what separates the Expert from the Master, except for here the Master must develop his own style, to go out and learn from different masters, to learn from different perspectives in order to create their own perspective.

Stage 7 - Practical Wisdom. Here Dreyfus has even abandoned his own examples of a car driver and a chess player and has dove deep into the theoretical and draws influence from the great philosopher Aristotle. Practical Wisdom as Dreyfus (2001: 48) sees it is 'the general ability to do the appropriate thing, at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way.'


While this is seen as the pinnacle of Dreyfus' stages, to me it doesn't quite fit well at the summit. Practical Wisdom seems to be more on a tangent with all the other stages, and influencing them all.

Using our Practical Wisdom - Barry Schwartz - 2010

Psychologist Barry Schwartz in his TED Talk 'Using our Practical Wisdom' , likens it to

'jazz musicians. The rules are like the notes on the page, and that gets you started, but then you dance around the notes on the page, coming up with just the right combination for this particular moment with this particular set of fellow players'

Certainly, it requires skill to pull this off, but do you really have to have mastered a skill before you can improvise and know when to do the right thing?

Conclusions:

Dreyfus' stages of skill acquisition are certainly intriguing, though I think through a narrow-minded view  of what is capable from online Education, and perhaps a bias towards spoken language, I believe he has misjudged its potential for higher level learning and critical thinking. Blake (2002: 383) again notes that 'all writing is fundamentally a social interaction' and Dreyfus should not be so quick to dismiss its qualities in respect to the emotional. Nowadays, we also have Skype, Youtube, video-conferencing and more to further interact and emphasise our presence online. With the technology we have available to us now, we have the means to enable higher-level learning online, we just need to be imaginative in the process. As stated earlier, Online Education is not the same as the traditional classroom of old. As John Maynard Keyes once put it

"The difficulty lies not in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones"

Bibliography:

1. Anon, Exchange with Chomsky [online] Germany: Znet, 2015 (viewed November 26th 2015) Available at: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/exchange-with-chomsky
2. Blake, R. (2002) Hubert Dreyfus on Distance Education: relays of educational embodiment. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34, 4, pp.379-385 
3. Dreyfus, H. (2001) On the Internet, 2, pp. 26-49, London: Routledge
4. Eteokleous-Grigoriou, N. & Photiou, S (2014) Integrating Blogs in Primary Education, Research on e-Learning and ICT in Education: Technological, Pedagogical and Instructional Perspectives, 9, pp.121-137
5. Garrison et al, (2010) Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), pp.87-105
6. Highton, S. What's on your Mind? [online] 2014 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVZYiJKl1Y
7. Keyes, J.M. (1936) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan
8. Online Reference, The five levels of skill acquisition, Novice, beginner, competent, naster and expert [online] 2015 (viewed November 26th 2015) Available at: http://blog.envole.net/the-five-levels-of-skill-acquisition-novice-beginner-competent-master-and-expert
9. Schwartz, B.  Using our Practical Wisdom [online] New York: TED Talks, 2010 (viewed November 29th 2015) Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_using_our_practical_wisdom?language=en
10. Swan, K & Ice, P. (2010) The Community of Inquiry framework ten years later: introduction to the special issue. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 1-4