Feet keep walking

Someone made the ironic remark on my Facebook page that I travel a lot to speak about how information travels in 'bits and digital form'. I retorted that, yes, it is a little ironic, but certainly not surprising, because people are naturally social beings. Our social nature ensures that we are more at ease in face to face contexts, and that technology mediation of communication will always be second best. That's why so much research has been invested in studying how people respond to digitally mediated forms of interaction. I was personally involved in some of the early large scale studies into how students and their teachers adapt to communication through audio, video and internet based tools. Unequivocally, those involved said that although technology is a great way of keeping in contact, personal connection in co-present environments is always more desirable. Learning technology has taken me all around the world to teach, speak and research, and I see no respite in the travelling as my schedule shows. It's conference season, and this coming month I'm travelling the length and breadth of the nation to give keynotes in four conferences and hosting two invited workshops.

I start on Friday 8 June with a keynote speech on Day 2 of the eLearning 2.0 conference, hosted by Brunel University, in West London. My presentation is entitled Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality, and will feature several debates on issues such as learning styles, digital natives and immigrants theory and other pedagogical themes.

On Sunday I fly up to Edinburgh and then onwards to Dundee where to keynote on Day 2 of the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals Scotland (CILIPS) Conference at the Apex City Quay Hotel. My keynote speech for CILIPS is called 'Learning in a Digital World' and will feature some of my recent work on 'Library 2.0' and 'Libraries without walls', featured on this blog.

On Tuesday afternoon I travel down to Ormskirk, near Liverpool  in time for the Solstice Conference on Wednesday 13 June, hosted by Edgehill University. I will be giving the opening keynote on Day 1 and speaking on the topic of 'Digital Pedagogy: The Future is Open'. I'm speaking about open source, open content, open educational resources and open scholarship.

My final event of the week will be at Southampton University, on Thursday 14 June, where I have been invited to present an unkeynote with Salford University's Cristina Costa at the Digital Literacies Conference. Cris and I are old friends, and because the conference focuses on digital literacies, we will be asking our audience to explore a number of contexts around literacies in a digital age.

The month of June draws to an end with two workshops at the E2BN Conference at the Robinson Centre in Wyboston. I will be talking about how social media and personalised learning can be brought together to provide dynamic new learning environments for all students.

The travel will be tiring, but I hope to meet a lot of old friends and new contacts, and I'm sure I will learn a lot. If you are at any of the above events, please come and say hello.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Feet keep walking by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Mentoring on the move

Another of my newly published articles landed on my desk this morning. It's an article that has been a long time coming, and I have already presented the work from the study in papers at several conferences over the last couple of years. Along with my Faculty of Education colleague Wendy Lambert-Heggs, I was successful almost 3 years ago in securing £3,000 from the Peninsula Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training to develop and evaluate a new method of professional distance mentoring. We used a simple two-person blog set up and asked student teachers and their mentors to participate. We eavesdropped as they created their dialogue and then interviewed them afterwards. We saw some interesting results from the MentorBlog Project when we compared the distance student views to those of students doing traditional face-to-face mentoring. Although the article has just been published, it appears as a 2009 reference, because the U.S. based Quarterly Review of Distance Education journal is always 6 months behind its published listing (maybe something to do with time zones). Below is the abstract and reference:

Wheeler S and Lambert-Heggs W (2009) Connecting distance learners and their mentors using blogs: The MentorBlog Project. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10 (4), 323-331,

In this article we describe the MentorBlog project, which facilitated the mentoring of trainee teachers in the post-compulsory sector through the use of blogs. In an experimental design, the study compared their experiences with students who received tradtional mentoring. The article highlights the importance of mentoring in the teacher education process, and argues that blogging can be a useful and viable alternative when students are not able to meet face-to-face with their mentors on a regular basis. A number of key blogging affordances are identified, including reflexivity, persistence, and immediacy, which can either encourage or undermine successful mentorial dialogue. We also identify dissonance as a barrier to full dialogue in mentoring and show how it can be a problem due to the archiving features on most blogs. The article concludes with some recommendations for the future wider development of blogs as mentorial tools for distance learners, and proposes an extension of the project to include the use of mobile phones as a route to providing "any time, any place" mentor support for nomadic students.

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'Mentoring on the move' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Lifeline

I have discovered that successful technology mediated interaction between learners is more likely when students are unable to meet face to face and it's the only option they have left. It may sound obvious, but when students are geographically isolated, they tend to take every opportunity to communicate with each other to share experiences, collaborate in project work, discuss the issues raised by the course, trade short cuts and study tips, and generally engage in social dialogue. It's like a lifeline to them. Many of my distance students have told me that it's good to know that other students 'out there' are in the same situation as them, and that they can communicate across distance at the click of a mouse. But it's not all good news….

Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt (1999) studied the effects of collaborative working and the development of online communities in learning. Some of their groups learnt in hybrid (blended) mode - that is, the groups studied predominantly online but occasionally gathered together to meet in a more traditional campus based setting. Palloff and Pratt reported that some of their student groups hardly ever communicated in face to face mode, but rather stored up their comments and contributions for the web based discussion group instead. Palloff and Pratt expressed disquiet about this state of affairs, because although interaction in an electronic environment is both desirable and powerful, it can be a lesser experience than face to face contact if this is available.

Personally, I can't see the problem. If students want to interact with each other they will do so, using whatever means they are most comfortable with. The job of the online tutor is to ensure that students can interact, regardless of their location, and to make sure that the tools are provided for all the possibilities.

Reference

Palloff, R. M. and Pratt, K. (1999) Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

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A balancing act

In two previous posts this week I tried to identify some of the reasons why students fail to engage in collaborative online learning environments, and also tried to suggest some possible solutions to the problem of social loafing. I thought Dean Groom's response - Why aren't they doing anything? - yesterday was particularly useful because it highlighted that there are differences between engagement in formal learning environments and informal environments such as massive multiplayer online games. I agree and suggest that it must be to do with different kinds of motivation. MMORPGS are designed with massive participation in mind and are usually more fun. Today I want to talk about some of the ways online groups work together.

Some previous research can shed light on these issues. In 1994 McGrath and Hollingshead showed that groups interacting using technology tend to take on specific roles within the group, and this often occurs spontaneously. They quote the theory of TIP (time, interaction and performance) which regards groups operating continuously and simultaneously within the three separate functions of production, member support and group well-being. There are in fact three types of support required by online learners (Carnwell, 1999). They are academic support, emotional and social support and technical support. I have observed with my own student groups that the last two are often taken care of by the members of the group themselves. It's the first one that is the sole preserve of the e-tutor.

Palloff and Pratt (1999) discovered that in many of their online student groups, individual learners emerged to take on specific roles in the support and group well-being functions, such as 'encourager', and conflict 'mediator'. They also saw that there are students who take it upon themselves to chase up other students when they have not been seen participating for a while in the online group discussions (akin to the student self-policing I mentioned yesterday). It would be interesting to discover whether such students would also adopt similar roles in a conventional classroom setting, but Palloff and Pratt offer no information on this. They do however, comment that the emergence of these roles is a strong indicator that community is forming within the online community, and that this mirrors the processes that occur in traditional community settings.

It's often the case that online environments mirror what happens in the real world. Online tutors often find themselves in a fine balancing act - they should be aware of these issues, intervening when necessary, but knowing when to step back so that the virtual group can self-regulate.

References

Carnwell, R. (1999) Distance education and the need for dialogue. Open Learning, 14 (1), 50-55.

McGrath, J. E. and Hollingshead, A. B. (1994) Groups Interacting with Technology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Palloff, R. M. and Pratt, K. (1999) Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

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Inspired learning

Anyone who has been involved in academic life for a while will tell you that research interests change over time. Mine certainly have. When I first became involved in learning technology research in the early 1980s (it was called 'educational technology' in those days) personal computers were in their infancy, and multi-media was breaking as the next 'big thing' in education. I spent my time developing software packages for 'computer assisted learning' which were text heavy but interactive, and then assessing how effective they were as tools to engage learners. I wanted to know why students were interested, excited, inspired, and why they got bored or demotivated.

Moving on into the 1990s, I began to get interested in distance education and open learning. I changed jobs and became less technically oriented, more learning focused. Over this time, I met several leading lights in the field and through a number of conversations and extensive reading, I began to develop an interest in human behaviour, cognitive processes and then human perception in learning environments. My subsequent degree in psychology then led me on into doing a research degree specifically studying these effects in distance education.

With the advent of the Internet, I began to develop an interest in how people learn in environments where they draw on a number of different sources, such as the Web, television, video, and audio. I could see early on that everything was pointing to convergence. My time spent between 1996-1998 on the RATIO project firmed up my ideas on distance learning, and how students could be engaged remotely using a choice of tools.

Press the fast forward button to the early days of Web 2.0, at the turn of this century, and my thoughts turned to how learners could be engaged in social and collaborative environments, where the rules of ownership were being fractured and where notions of authority and knowledge expertise were being challenged. The emergence of concepts such as personal learning environments, many-to-many broadcasting and user generated content all piqued my interest, and that is the point I have now reached. Most of my current talks and presentations centre on the new technologies and how they engage learners. And that to me, seems to be the theme that has threaded its way through my entire research career - engaging learners. Whatever the technology, whichever the environment, if learners are engaged (motivated, captivated, excited and inspired) I want to know how and why. That's why I'm a researcher in learning technology.

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Spinning the Web

This is the final part in my 11 part series on the history and impact of distance education. I have taken a British perspective on this, but of course, other views are available. In this final part, another great Briton makes his impact with a contribution to the World Wide Web.

‘Enquire Within Upon Everything’ was an obscure computer program designed 25 years ago by a young software consultant called Tim Berners-Lee. The program may have been obscure but it was also ground breaking as it encapsulated the ideas that would eventually enable Internet users to link directly from their personal computer to any information they required.

Tim Berners-Lee was born in London in 1955. In 1976 he graduated from Queen's College, Oxford University, before working at CERN, the European nuclear research facility in Switzerland. Whilst working as a computer software consultant, Berners-Lee began to consider the problem of how to communicate and access information via computer on the emerging world wide phenomenon that was known as the Internet. In 1989, Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext project which he called the World Wide Web. Two years later, his ideas had crystallized on the Internet, and by 1993 the principles of his browser system Mosaic was being championed by the University of Illinois. A year later, in 1994, Berners-Lee joined M.I.T. where he headed up the fledgling W3 Consortium.

The World Wide Web is a truly unique and all pervasive innovation - without it the Internet would not be as successful as it evidently is. Browsers make accessing information ‘friendlier’, and pages more navigable. Berners-Lee has campaigned tirelessly to keep the World Wide Web open and free, and this is possibly one reason why it remains largely an un-policed, imaginatively fertile and unpredictable aspect of distance education. For many commentators, the Internet was inevitable - the World Wide Web simply made it easier for millions to use it.

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University of the second chance

This is part 10 of my series on the history and impact of distance education. On Friday in part 9 we looked at how satellite technology has impacted upon global communication and e-learning. Today's post is all about the Open University model of distance education.

Under the Labour government of Harold Wilson, the UK’s Ministry of Education decided upon the ambitious plan of establishing a university that would confer degrees entirely delivered at a distance. It was higher education for all, regardless of age, social or economic status. Wilson’s government advisors proposed the name ‘University of the Air’ to acknowledge the institution's predominant form of proposed delivery method – broadcast telvision and radio. It was not long, however, before the UK government realised that the correspondence tools first established in Victorian times were still very valuable. Eventually, in 1969 the Open University (OU) was born, opening its 'doors' to students two years later.

With the OU came a whole new set of benchmarks for quality in distance education. Yet the British Open University was not the first Open University. That honour probably belongs to the University of South Africa (UNISA) which was established a few years prior to the British OU. However, under the guidance of several luminaries from the world of distance education, including the late Charles Wedemeyer (University of Wisconsin), the OU flourished and established a model of best practice that many subsequent open universities emulated. Now known as 'mega universities', several open universities around the world that deliver degrees predominantly via distance education can now boast over 1 million students. Indira Gandhi University in India is the largest with a staggering 2.5 million students enrolled each year.

The OU’s current foray into electronic forms of learning such as web based learning and computer mediated communications is an extension of its tried and tested model of distance-blended learning. Many OU courses have face to face tutorial contact and week long summer schools built into their structure, but most of the learning process is still conducted away from the parent institution, based in Milton Keynes. Regular television and radio broadcasts are still used, as are a range of other methods including online delivery, mailouts, and the OU still maintains a close partnership with the government owned British Broadcasting Corporation with a regular schedule of programmes broadcast on radio and television.

On a personal note, as an OU graduate myself (BSc (Hons) Psychology 1995 - 1st Class) I would like to pay tribute to the OU and all that it does. It really is the University of the Second Chance. I blew it at school, and left with few academic qualifications. I simply wasn't interested in study at the time. My teacher told my parents 'Steve's a very sociable lad, but he'll never be an academic!' Well, the OU gave me my second chance when I needed it (and teachers don't know everything). When I met Sir John Daniel (then the OU Vice Chancellor) over a few drinks during a conference in Ankara back in 1998, we talked long about the history of the OU and how it had changed so many lives, including mine. Sitting with us were a number of other pioneers of distance education, namely Tony Bates and Michael Moore (no not that one), and I'm still in touch with them to this day. They had a lot of stories to tell about the early days of the mega-universities, but that's for another blog post....

Tomorrow: Part 11: Spinning the Web

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1945 and all that

This is part 9 in my series on the history and impact of distance education. Yesterday in Part 8 we saw how the television was conceived and invented. However, before the introduction of geosynchronous satellite technology, global telecommunication was problematic, and global distance education continued at the pace of the snail mail whilst radio and audioconferencing the mainstay distance communication media.

1945 is a momentous year in the history of the development of distance education technology. It was not only the year we saw the back of the Second World War. It was in this year that a young English scientist published a seemingly outlandish article in the magazine Wireless World.

The article, entitled Extra-Terrestrial Relays speculated that if three radio transmitters were placed at equidistant points at a precise altitude above the Earth's equator, they would be able to achieve global communication coverage. This is a facsimile of the original article. The author of the article was none other than the now celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and other stories), and the article was instrumental in opening the debate about the feasibility of global communication satellites. Just 12 years later, on October 4th 1957, the USSR succeeded in launching the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit - and the Space Race began.

The most important aspect of Clarke's theory was the placement of the satellite at a precise orbit of 22,300 miles over the Equator. At this altitude, Clarke speculated, the satellite would have exactly the same velocity as the rotational speed of the Earth, and it would therefore appear to be stationary in the sky. This technique is now well established, enabling satellite users to dispense with expensive tracking devices. Communication satellites are placed into geosynchronous orbit, and this zone of optimum distance above the Equator is now referred to as the Clarke Belt. If you are in the Northern hemisphere, you will see that satellite dishes tend to point South toward the Equator. In the Southern hemisphere the opposite applies. In Equatorial regions, it's a common site to see satellite dishes pointing right up at the sky, and some have holes drilled in them to drain the rain water out! Queen Elizabeth II knighted Clarke for his services to science in 2000. Sir Arthur C. Clarke retired to the island of Sri Lanka where he died in 2008.

In 1965, Clarke's dream was realised when the first ever geosychronous communication satellite was positioned in orbit above the Atlantic Ocean by NASA. By 1969, three satellites had been linked to achieve the first fully global satellite coverage. For more on the uses of satellite technology in distance education visit here. Today, a lot of distance education provision is dependent upon geosynchronous communication satellites, and we take for granted the ability to talk to people on the other side of the world via telephone, video or other means. Watching live events from around the world on television is not something we think of as particularly special. We are so used to the idea that satellites are there, we give them no second thought. If they suddenly disappeared though, I think we would all know it.

On Monday: Part 10: University of the second chance

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Man of vision

This is part 8 in my series on the history and impact of distance education. In part 7 yesterday we traced the history of telecommunications and the contribution of the telephone. We continue today with what many of us do just about every evening - taking a look at the television.

Another Scot by the name of John Logie Baird also made a huge impact on telecommunication and indirectly, on modern distance education. Baird is celebrated as a man of great vision - television. In fact, Baird was the inventor of many new technologies, including fiber optics, a technology that looms almost as large as TV in the distance education hall of fame. Born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland, a coastal town about 25 miles to the northwest of Glasgow, Baird was the fourth child of the local church minister. Even as a young boy he was known for his home experiments, one of which literally left him with his fingers burnt! Baird eventually left Helensburgh to seek work in the capital, London, and lived in the South of England for much of the remainder of his life. Much of the early research that defined his lifetime of innovation took place on the south coast in the small towns of Hastings and Folkestone.

Although the original term 'television' (literally 'to see from a distance') was coined by scientist Constantin Perskyi at a conference in Paris in 1900, it was Baird who is credited with the creation of the first operational device that could transmit pictures. Baird successfully tested the prototype of his mechanically scanned disk television in the laboratory in 1925 and it was later demonstrated in public in London in 1926.

However, it was not long before Baird's mechanical version was supplanted by electronic television, which laid the foundation for today's television broadcasts, interactive television and video conferencing technologies. Never the less, Baird's pioneering achievements, including his involvement in the first trans-Atlantic television transmission, were important scientific accomplishments. Baird's far reaching innovation is exactly that - an invention that enables us to reach far across distances to hear and see each other, and to learn together no matter where we are located. The computer and television together provide the basis upon which visual communication and global information access is achieved. There is just one more component needed to achieve global telecommunication though.... which we will discuss in tomorrow's post.

Tomorrow: Part 9: 1945 and all that

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Ringing the changes

This is part 7 in my series on the history and impact of distance education. Yesterday in Part 6, we examined the impact computers have made on pedagogy. Another innovation as ubiquitous and influential as the computer was invented by a Briton prior to the Second World War. This invention also has a great deal of importance to the practice of distance education, as we understand it today.

We have a Scot to thank for one of the most taken for granted technologies in the modern world. Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1875, along with his assistant Thomas A. Watson, Bell constructed instruments that transmitted speech. In 1876 Bell invented the forerunner of the modern telephone, a device which today forms the basis of many communications technologies from the cellular phone to the Internet.

Bell received his official patent to the telephone on March 7, 1876. Three days later he and Watson, located in different rooms, tested the new type of transmission device described in his patent. As they were setting up the experiment, Watson suddenly heard Bell's voice through the earpiece saying, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." Bell had had an accident with a battery, and had spilled acid over his clothes. He had inadvertently use the telephone to speak to Watson, but when he realised what he had achieved, the accident was soon forgotten!

The first telephone company, the Bell Telephone Company, was established in 1877 to exploit the potential of Bell's new invention. During his productive career, Alexander Graham Bell invented several other devices, although none were as useful as the telephone. He died on August 2, 1922, in Nova Scotia, Canada. Technology supported distance education owes a lot to this Scot inventor, who changed the concept of what it meant to communicate with others over great distances. Today we take for granted the fact that we can punch a number into a keypad, and somewhere in the world, a corresponding telephone will ring, connecting us to a person who we can hear in 'real time'. The social presence of the telephone (the perception that you are connected to the other person) is very high, and many prefer it to so-called richer media such as videoconferencing. We often forget that telecommunication methods are the backbone upon which the Internet and other global communication methods have been based. Tomorrow we will take a look at another technology. Can you guess what it is yet?

Tomorrow: Part 8: Man of vision

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Come the revolution...

This is part 6 of my series on the history and impact of distance education. In part 5, we saw how programmable computing was first proposed.

When Charles Babbage first conceived the 'Difference Engine' in Victorian England, he could have had no conception of the far-reaching effects of his invention. As we have already seen, Babbage's first attempt at creating a hand-cranked machine to mechanically manipulate arithmetic functions became the blue print for the earliest programmable computers.

Since the end of the 1980's the computer has entered into the world's collective consciousness as a ubiquitous electronic device that affects every aspect of our daily lives. They are everywhere - in offices, in homes, in our hands. Few could be in any doubt that the computer is now influencing the way we live, work, communicate and spend our leisure time. The computer is at the very heart of what some have called 'the information revolution' - if indeed, a revolution it is. When connected to the global telecommunications network such as the Internet and all its convergent features, the computer is a very powerful tool, providing distance learners with opportunities to access learning experiences they would otherwise have missed.

Babbage's invention is now all grown up, and offers us a multitude of destinations, enabling us to explore previously unseen worlds, which neither he nor any of his Victorian contemporaries could ever have conceived. Computers now enable us to work and communicate flexibly and enjoy unprecedented access to information. But freedom of this kind comes with a price tag for educators.

History has shown us that most revolutions have a dictatorship waiting in the wings. The 'computer revolution' also exudes an air of tyranny. The way computers are employed has for some time tended to dictate the way teachers conceptualise and develop courses, design learning materials, manage the virtual learning environment, assess learning and communicate with their students. We have all experienced 'death by PowerPoint' and we all are aware of the stranglehold that software companies such as Microsoft have on our computers. Perhaps I'm painting things a little too black here, but we need to be aware of all the implications.

David Jonassen and his colleagues (1999, p 219) were not slow in responding to the trends in e-learning, arguing that in order for students to learn effectively from new technology, it will first be necessary for their teachers to accept a new model of learning. This new model is premised upon educators rejecting the role of the model where the teacher is the 'knowledge provider' and instead, adopting of the role of the facilitator. Some teachers may not like this. Time militates against them, as does a fear of losing control for some. Others are rushing with open arms to embrace new technologies. Some are going too far, using technology simply because it's there and it's cool. I suspect a lot of teachers will be ambivalent, gazing on with a gimlet eye, because they know what we know - change is the one thing that is always certain in education.

Digital technologies have been responsible for some of the most radical changes of the last few years in schools. Computers brought the world to the classroom. Now smart mobile versions are taking the classroom out into the world. Distance education is going through changes, just like traditional education - and a lot of the changes are being driven by the introduction of new technologies. The pace is relentless, and will not slow down. We know this: The sage on the stage is rapidly becoming the guide on the side - mainly due to the impact and influence of digital technologies. And it all started with the humble calculating machine.

Tomorrow: Part 7: Ringing the changes.

Reference: Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L. and Wilson, B. (1999) Learning with technology: A constructivist perspective. Upper Saddle River, NY: Prentice Hall.

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Catching a code

This is part 5 of my series on the history and impact of distance education. In part 4, we saw how Charles Babbage developed his ideas to create one of the first computers - the Difference Engine.

One of Charles Babbage’s associates was a member of Britian’s aristocracy. Ada Byron, also known as Lady Lovelace, was the daughter of the romantic poet Lord (George) Byron, and she seems to have had a great deal of time on her hands. Some accounts suggest that she wished to become 'an analyst and a metaphysician' and that from a young age she had developed a passion for science - an aspiration that women were generally discouraged from following in 19th Century Britain. She didn't seem fazed by these restrictions though - and tended to follow her own ideals.

Ada was still in her teens when she heard of Charles Babbage's idea of the Analytical Engine - an automatic calculating system - and the successor to his earlier invention, the Difference Engine. Babbage had conjectured that a calculating engine might not only predict but could act on that prediction. Ada was very impressed by these ideas and began to speculate about her own contribution to the development of the calculating machine. Correspondence between Lady Lovelace and Babbage was by all accounts filled with a heady mixture of fact and fantasy, as they both began to speculate on how such a calculating device might be used. Lady Lovelace eventually published an article in which she predicted that Babbage's machine might be used for scientific and domestic use. This visionary account of the machine’s potential was uncanny in its accuracy, predicting its potential to perform a multitude of tasks such as playing music, creating pictures and composing letters. It's a pity we don't have someone of her calibre in the meteorological office today, predicting our weather for us.

Lady Lovelace suggested to Babbage that a plan might be formulated to enable the Difference Engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers (look, just follow the link). This suggestion is now seen by many as the earliest example of computer programming. It wasn't exactly C++ but it worked. Lord Byron's daughter, in her collaboration with the genius Charles Babbage, gave the world the second part of the computer equation - the knowledge that it was possible not only to create a computing device, but to write instructions for it to follow so that it could produce a defined result. The modern computer is based upon this premise. In 1979, the U.S. Department of Defense named a computer program 'Ada' in honour of her pioneering ideas.

Tomorrow: Part 6: Come the revolution...

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Making a difference

This is Part 4 - a continuation in my series on the history and impact of distance education. Yesterday in Part 3, we saw how the correspondence course could be adapted to deliver a full degree. In Part 4 we start to examine the technology behind distance education.

Considering its relatively small size and population, (and this is my personal view) the United Kingdom has contributed disproportionately to the rise of technology supported distance education over the last two centuries (Wheeler, 2005). But I would say that wouldn't I? I'm a Brit after all. The computer, one of the most vital distance education tools of the last 30 years, is generally agreed to have been most influenced by British mathematician Charles Babbage in 1821. Yes, I know that other Europeans such as Blaise Pascal and Konrad Zuse pioneered their own versions of calculating machines, but Babbage's method of calculation through the Difference Engine - which later became a programmable machine - was the innovation that provided the template on which modern computing is based.

Charles Babbage was raised in a well-to-do English family, and was a child prodigy. Historical accounts suggest that he taught himself algebra when very young, and developed a great passion for all things numerical. So, before he could be numbered with the greats, he had to be great with numbers (Stop it - Ed.). We even have a building named in his honour here at the University of Plymouth, which of course houses our school of computing and the open access computing suites.

It was inevitable that he would eventually follow a career in mathematics and in 1811 he enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a greatly respected scientist and was honoured for his work when he was invited to become a member of the Royal Society. The story goes that one day Babbage was sitting in his study, holding his head in his hands, as he pored over reams of statistics. A colleague came in, saw him and enquired, ‘What are you dreaming of Babbage?’ ‘I was thinking’ replied Babbage, ‘that many of these calculations could be performed mechanically!’ They must have thought him a nut job, but Babbage was serious. Soon he began to take an interest in the notion of building a 'calculating machine'.

He eventually succeeded in building a prototype of his Difference Engine but his work was stalled due to lack of interest and limited funding from the British government and little support from his peers. Sadly, he died a bitter and disappointed man, having invested much of his life and personal fortune into an ambitious and ground breaking engineering project that showed little positive results during his own lifetime. His legacy and influence on modern life however, is profound and Charles Babbage is today acknowledged as the 'Father of Computing'.

The computer has extended its influence exponentially in the past few decades, and has advanced unrecognisably beyond the original notion of being a mere ‘calculating machine.’ It is now a very sophisticated tool for the development, storage, retrieval, delivery and transformation of data - it has the potential to enrich and extend educational experiences, and can provide students with a truly time and space independent portal to education. We must remember though that good pedagogy does not just happen because technology is being used. Good pedagogy takes place when teachers use technology appropriately and creatively. That is what can make the difference. We also need to know this: Such sophisticated and far reaching functions would never have been possible without the ability to issue instructions, or ‘program’ the computer. In Part 5 we will begin to explore this.

Reference: Wheeler, S. (2005) British Distance Education: A Proud Tradition. In Y. Visser, L. Visser and M. Simonson (Eds.) Trends and Issues in Distance Education: An International Perspective. Greenwich, Connecticut, USA: Information Age Publishers.

On Monday: Part 5: Catching a code

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Short hand, long distance

Here's the second in my series on the history of distance education. Yesterday's post examined some conceptual issues of 'distance'. Today we look at the roots of distance education.

Arguably the first distance education course was delivered in the first century, in Asia Minor. The writings of St Paul (known as epistles) were in effect a form of instruction delivered to remote groups of people (early Christian churches) distributed by courier across what is now Israel, Turkey, Greece and Italy (more here). Yet this was very much a didactic, one-way mode of knowledge transmission. There was no latitude for interaction, and therefore no dialogue occurred between student and teacher.

In an organised format, one of the earliest occurances of distance education emerged in Victorian England. When Isaac Pitman established the first organised correspondence course in England in 1840, he achieved it on the back of two technologies – the printing press and the newly arrived national Penny Postal service.

Pitman’s correspondence school taught shorthand to a distributed nationwide audience predominantly of office workers. Pitman’s use of the nationwide postal service advanced the work of previous correspondence courses giving educators the ability to engage in two-way communication with their students wherever they were located in the country. This was an asynchronous (time delayed) form of communication, and the process took time, but the Victorians were not afflicted by the impatience and clock watching habits we now see in contemporary society. Life was much more sedate. Within a few short years of commencing distance delivery, Pitman's correspondence school had enrolled over 100,000 students. Even by today's standards, this was a phenomenal number of students. In 1892, Pitman was knighted by Queen Victoria for his services to education and his visionary plan to 'educate one and all'.

This early success prompted many others to attempt similar feats, and soon the organised correspondence course was burgeoning. In the US, Anna Eliot Ticknor set up the Society to Encourage Study at Home' which was predominantly aimed at women (for more on this story follow this link). Other similar organisations soon began to spring up. Geographical distance had been breached, and students were able to glean feedback on their progress from their instructors wherever they were. It was not so much the time spent waiting that was an issue for students in correspondence courses – rather it was the depth of richness of feedback they received that made all the difference between success and failure. Such two way interaction over distance via correspondence became the basis for much of what was to follow. Even today, in the advent of digital technology, ubiquitous communications and web based learning, the vast majority of distance education is still reliant on mailed out, paper based material and the humble correspondence course.

Tomorrow: Part 3: First degree burns

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The space between us all

In this new series I will discuss how distance education has developed and the influences it has had on our current education provision. Comments are most welcome. Here's the first installment:

A few years ago I heard a funny remark at an e-learning conference in Germany. Someone suggested that small area nations such as the United Kingdom have no need for distance education, because they have no ‘distance’. I laughed at the time and replied that if we followed this line of reasoning, there would be no need for any education either. More laughter. Of course the UK has distance education! I have already made the case for a significant British contribution to the development of distance education, both in terms of its conceptualisation, and also in terms of its innovation of technologies such as telephony (Alexander Graham Bell), television (John Logie Baird), correspondence courses (such as Sir Isaac Pitman's shorthand courses), the World Wide Web (Sir Tim-Berners-Lee) and of course the British Open University model (Wheeler, 2005).

Although light-hearted, the conversation at the German conference led me to re-examine the notion of ‘distance’ and in fact ultimately launched me into seven years of study culminating in a research degree in the field. A key question for distance educators to ask then, is – what is distance? Distance is almost always conceived of as being geographical in nature. In class I often ask my students ‘what is the distance between you and I?’ Their first answer is always an approximate measurement of feet, yards, or (if they live in continental Europe) in metres. I then ask them to reconsider their response. I ask them what other distances there are between us. After a little consternation and head scratching, the light comes on and they begin to respond in terms of other 'distances'.

There may be an age gap, or a gender gap. These distances are based on the premise that people of different age groups tend to see things in different ways, and have different values – which leads to a ‘distance’ being perceived between them – what was once called ‘the generation gap’. This may have been the basis for the controversial assumptions made by Marc Prensky's 'Digital Natives and Immigrants' theory. The gender gap may be a little more subtle, but the distance between males and females can be just as tangible. Ask anyone who is married. Then there is the intellectual distance experienced between students and their instructors. This perception often leads to a power differential between the two, and (some would say an appropriate) distancing. Other distances may also come into play including cultural and particularly language distances. These may lead to misunderstandings or misconceptions about the motives or intentions of people, and may create a psychological distance. I go on to tell the students that there are always ‘distances’ between each of us, no matter what the nature of the transaction.

In distance education, the geographical distance does not have as much influence as it once had, as interactive technologies are now quite sophisticated. Beatle George Harrison once wrote ‘We were thinking about the space between us all…and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion...’ One of the most important distances to overcome is the perceived distance between each of us and those we attempt to communicate with. Michael Moore (no, not that one) once theorised that there is a distance between us and others which is one of a transactional nature. My theory is that depending on how a technology is used, it has the potential to either amplify or reduce such transactional distances (Wheeler, 2007). As educators we need to address many of these issues particularly if we are operating within a distance education context...but it also applies in face to face teaching and learning contexts.

Distance education is of course best conceived of as a method for delivering and supporting learning opportunities to students who can't be present on campus or in a classroom. It is an ideal strategy for the promotion of inclusive education, where those who cannot travel to a university or college for some reason can still participate in a community of learning. In an organised format, one of the first beginnings of distance education was in England in the Victorian era....

Tomorrow: Part 2: Short hand, long distance

References: Wheeler, S. (2005) British Distance Education: A Proud Tradition. In Y. Visser, L. Visser and M. Simonson (Eds.) Trends and Issues in Distance Education: An International Perspective. Greenwich, Connecticut, USA: Information Age Publishers.

Wheeler, S. (2007) The Influence of Communication Technologies and Approaches to Study on Transactional Distance in Blended Learning, [Abstract] ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology, 15 (2), 103-117.

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2008 Milestones Retro

The end of each year is an ideal time to reflect upon personal progress and look back at the milestones, the achievements, the events that have made the year. It's a time to consolidate, to be thankful, and in the act of looking back, to also look forward to what the new year might bring. It's a time to make plans in the light of past successes (and failures) and to celebrate and take stock. Here are my top ten milestones of 2008.

The no 10. achievement of the year is presenting papers in one year at each of what I consider to be the four most influential e-learning conferences in Europe. EDEN (Lisbon, Portugal), ALT-C (Leeds, England), ICL (Villach, Austria) and Online Educa (Berlin, Germany). I attended all of these and another dozen or so conferences this year, and have met some incredibly smart and passionate academics and professionals, all of whom have inspired me to push forward myself to extend the boundaries of e-learning. I'm very grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and energy.

My no 9. achievement for 2008 was an invitation for me to edit the proceedings for the ICT and Learning for the Net Generation IFIP conference which was held in Kuala Lumpur in July this year. Working with so many excellent and well known researchers and writers was stimulating and rewarding, and the finished product, complete with ISBN will be a part of the archive of accumulated knowledge in the field of computer based learning.

At no. 8 was a personal honour for me - an invitation to participate in the inaugral Open EduTech Summit which was held in Barcelona in October. Being numbered as one of 40 worldwide experts on open learning and distance education, was indeed an honour for me, particularly when the complete list of those invited is reviewed. I was fortunate to meet with and work alongside some real luminaries in the field such as Mark Bullen, Vijay Kumar and Sugata Mitra.

My no. 7 this year represents another personal honour. This month I was delighted to hear I had been nominated in two categories of the Twitter 'Shorty' Awards - the #education and #nonprofit categories. I don't stand a cat's chance of winning but just being nominated for one award, let alone two, is humbling - but shows that there are people out there who value what I write when I am on Twitter. Whatever the outcome of the awards, I will continue to be a twit for the forseeable future!

No. 6 was the news in September of my promotion within the Faculty of Education to co-ordinate all Education Development and Technology Mediated Learning activities, here at the University of Plymouth. I already convene the University's e-learning research network, but this role now gives me the opportunities to explore new and emerging technologies and how they can be applied to support and enhance learning across an entire faculty. I also now chair the Faculty of Education's Information Technology Committee.

At no 5. is the imminent publication of my fourth book, an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', which will be in the bookstores for the first week of 2009. The cover of the book can be seen (above) for the very first time. This book is the second I have published with the US based Information Age publishing house, and my fourth on e-learning to date. It is an achievement for me on a number of levels, including the honour of working with great writers such as Howard Rheingold, John Traxler and Palitha Edirisingha.

At no. 4 was a very recent achievement. I was delighted to be nominated in 2 categories in the prestigious Edublog Awards (the 'Eddies') - best individual blog and most influential blog post. When I look at the competition for these awards, I realise that there is little chance of me winning, but as I have already said, the nomination means a great deal to me personally and professionally. I try to write blog posts that are both entertaining and informative.

At no. 3 is my election as chair of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 3.6 on distance education. I was honoured and thrilled to be elected to lead this reputable and highly respected group of researchers and academics. I hope I live up to expectations of the group to contribute toward IFIP's continued success.

At no. 2, I was very pleased to be invited to take over the editorship of a very highly respected journal, Interactive Learning Environments, after serving as Book Reviews editor for two years. I am daunted but excited at the prospect of steering the journal over the next few years, but I have an excellent team of associate editors and a stirling editorial board behind me to help me to ensure that ILE continues its success story.

At no. 1, and my most valued achievement of 2008, is my award of a lifetime EDEN fellowship. I was notified of the award earlier in the year and had to keep it fairly quiet until it was presented at the annual EDEN conference in Lisbon, in June. As one of the awarding committee remarked to me later, 'Someone can be president of EDEN for a short time, but a fellowship is for life'.

It has certainly been a very busy and rewarding year, with plenty of great events to remember, wonderful people to recall meeting for the first time, and excellent things to reflect upon. Here's to a successful and fulfilling year for all of us in 2009! Happy New Year everyone!

French Polishers

We are in the second day here at the Polish Virtual Universities Conference in Warsaw. Ronan Chabauty (FIED – Federation Interuniversitaire d’Enseignment a Distance: A French Distance Teaching Organisation) talked about France’s national conceptualisation of distance education, which is the one the French Education ministry has approved for funding. His keynote involved discussion of the old quadrant model of ‘same time, different place, etc’. He espouses two classic typologies, one of which is the competence model of enriched learning through technology, whilst the other takes a location dependent position of ‘reduced face to face’ and ‘quasi non-existent face to face’. I'm not sure what he meant by this, as there was no time for elaboration. However, I think this essentially means that distance teaching for the French is an alternative means to face to face and as Ronan said, 'has to be distinguishable from face to face teaching'. A little 'old school' I thought and perhaps not acknowledging some of the new technologies that are reducing conceptions of what distance actually is. I had to get up on my hind legs and I ask him what his position was then, on the blended approaches that are so prevalent in the UK? He replied that students who are away from the campus receive the 'enriched learning through technology' delivery - not so much a distinction then, as an alternative method of delivery. Students are changing and we need to change our delivery methods, he said, which first involves changing the minds of colleagues. A perennial problem which I think affects all institutions.

Ronan concluded his talk by saying that in France (and also most other places) there is still a great amount of work to do to ensure that anyone and everyone can study from wherever they are located and therefore participate fully in lifelong learning.

Oh, and by the way, the photo above is one I took last night as the sun was setting on the old Stare Miesto (old city) of Warsaw.

Trail blazers

The EDEN Conference in Lisbon this year runs like a Who’s Who in of Distance Education and so it should. EDEN is one of the largest of its kind and everyone seems to flock here each year to rub shoulders with the good and the great. OK, so I’m waxing a little lyrical, but last night I had conversations with some long serving distance educators and what many would consider pioneers in the field, and it is a little humbling to think how much they did to lay the foundations of what has become a huge global force in education.

Tony Bates is here, and tells me he celebrates 70 years on this planet next year. Michael Moore is here, taking a sabbatical in the UK this coming autumn, before his final year at Penn State. I met them both for the first time at a conference in Turkey in 1997, and didn’t know who either of them were. I do now. Got their books, collected the handshakes.

Desmond Keegan is on the list of delegates and so is Torstein Rekkedal, who picked up a Senior EDEN Fellow award at the reception event. Alan Tait presides over the EDEN family in his perpetually genial mode. I also met Lani Gunawardena for the first time, over from New Mexico to take part, and look forward to hearing her keynote address later this week. There are others here who would probably love to be mentioned in the same blog as these uber-professionals. But I won’t. There is a subtle shuffling for position from some of the younger pretenders, but the simple fact is, most of the above people were in distance education before it was called distance education, and most of them grappled with connecting remote learners when there was little to choose from but correspondence courses and audio conferencing.

With the advent of Web 2.0, mobile phones and wireless technologies, their theories and exploits may seem a little dusty and out of date. But make no mistake, without their dedication and prescience, we would not be in the healthy position we are in now with virtual universities, e-learning and any-time, any-where education. So raise a glass to the trail blazers of distance education. I’m glad I met them. Oh, and the picture above is one I took over the parapet at St George's Castle yesterday. It's a view across the north of the city. Wish you were here?

EDEN on the Tagus

This year's EDEN (European Distance and Elearning Network) conference looks like being a real blast. It will be in Lisbon, Portugal, in the middle of June. Last week, I was informed that my paper had been accepted (I will be talking about blogs, would you believe?) and so this week I booked my hotel. Today the message below was sent from EDEN to all delegates, and it looks very appetising...

"The Conference Dinner online booking will open on 13 May. You can reserve places for this special event by using the above booking link and completing the form. The dinner will be held on 13 June, Lisbon's celebratory day of St. Antonio, as well as the date when our host Universidade Aberta will be 20 years old. On this truly festive occasion, the magnificent Estufa Real Restaurant will offer a rich, typical dinner with Portuguese dishes, drinks and Fado music in the heart of the 18th century Ajuda Botanical Gardens, overlooking the Tagus river".

Hope to see as many of you as possible at EDEN this year. Comment in the box below if you are attending!

The old and the new

I'm flying out to Athens this afternoon in a big orange and white bird, to attend the International Conference on Open and Distance Learning (ICODL) which is being hosted by the Hellenic Open University and the University of Cyprus. Keynote speakers include Michael Moore, Alan Tait and Paul Clark, all veterans of the Distance Education model of learning. It may turn out to be a clash of the old and the new.

The conference blurb states:
'Distance education is one of the most talked-about topics today in higher education and corporate training. This conference, which will provide the latest information on distance education programs, processes, packages, and protocols, is geared to both experienced professionals and interested newcomers to distance education and online learning who hail from a variety of work sectors, including higher education, continuing education, business, government, professional associations, and nonprofit organizations'.

Well, I'm not so sure that distance education is still a viable term, with so much blurring of the boundaries between home, work and school. Is there any 'distance' worth talking about any more? Technologies are becoming ever more personal, pervasive and ubiquitous, and a great deal more transparent, and I'm wondering how long we will continue to talk about a paradigm which may have seen its day. Never the less, I'm going with an open mind, to hear what people are saying, to see if there is anything new in 'distance education'. I'm also presenting my own paper on e-learning to support nomadic forms of learning where students enjoy the same quality of provision, screen topography and equivalency of support, wherever and whenever they are. Will report from the conference when I get the chance.