Distance Education vs In-Person Classroom Environments
With the advancement of technology, versions of online education and instruction has become much more accessible and is explored in all areas of education: from pre-k to adult learning, from public to private school, and from formal to informal education. It is reasonable to expect that one could find opportunity for online education in just about any facet of life, but the quality of online education can vary widely. There are many examples of online courses that are essentially a repository of information that the student has to work their way through independently- some are even lacking any form of assessment (i.e., some online “master classes”). Conversely, there are courses that include in-depth correspondence with an instructor and classmates as well as a variety of ways for the learner to engage with the material.
When learners are allowed to explore their medium, it is more beneficial for learning than without. It is for this reason that Bernard et al. (2004) argue that shifting a course from in-person to distance education may allow for a transformation of the learning experience that offers opportunities otherwise not available during in-person instruction. In other words, when executed appropriately, different classroom environments will offer their own strengths and weaknesses, but no one environment is better than another.
Additionally, Bernard et al. (2004) also argues that regardless of the classroom environment, what qualifies as “good” instruction does not change. In other words, the 7 principles still apply. However how each principle is executed, pedagogically speaking, will look different. This means that well-designed distance education courses are not dependent on the technology available, but rather the instructor’s pedagogical reality. Bernard et al. described this best when they said
For some, the key definitional feature of DE is the physical separation of learners in space and time. For others, the physical separation in space is only a sufficient condition for DE. In the former definition, asynchronous communication is the norm. In the latter definition, synchronous communication is the norm…. There is a now old instructional design adage that goes something like this: “A medium should be selected in the service of instructional practices, not the other way around.” We would encourage all practitioners and policymakers bent on developing and delivering quality DE, whether on the Internet or through synchronous teleconferencing, to heed this advice. (Bernard et al. 2004)
Synchronous vs Asynchronous Instruction
They also note that many synchronous instructors likely tend to engage in lecture-based, instructor-oriented strategies, which often do not apply well to distance education classroom environments. In fact, they could be the reason why they observed substantially higher dropout rates in asynchronous as opposed to synchronous distance education courses. However, utilizing strategies and tools for asynchronous communication between the instructor, learner, and between peers can be a huge benefit to distance education (Bernard et al. 2004).
In general, many researchers indicate that synchronous instruction lends well towards in-person classroom environments, whereas asynchronous instruction lends well towards distance education. However, other researchers indicate that this may be a direct result of the pedagogical strategies utilized by the instructors (Bernard, 2004). That is, many instructors assume that asynchronous instruction is the best approach for any distance education course, so that is where they put the majority of their efforts. However, for instructors that are able to adapt their synchronous pedagogical strategies from in-person to distance education classroom environments, it is possible that synchronous instruction can lend well towards both types of classroom environments.
Summary of Existing Frameworks
Why do we need a new framework?
Most instructors have good intentions when creating online courses, however the strategies that should be utilized to make them effective are not easy to identify \cite{duffy2000}. One such concern is that utilizing some strategies that work during in-person synchronous instruction don’t translate well to the online environment (such as peer-to-peer interaction) and can cause both the instructor and students to spend too much time managing it, thus adding additional stressors to the course \cite{duffy2000}.