First degree burns

This is Part 3 - a continuation of my series on the history and impact of distance education. Yesterday in Part 2, we saw how correspondence courses were established in Britain and the USA.

Setting up short vocational courses seemed to be no problem. Academic programmes were an entirely prospect though. When Cambridge scholar Richard Green Moulton attempted to establish an entire degree via correspondence, he met with a wall of opposition. Moulton’s plan was to deliver a degree course managed along similar lines to the correspondence school techniques made so successful by Isaac Pitman. Pitman had used printed cards mailed out to students through the Penny Post service. Students sent their work back via mail where it was then graded. Students then received their grades along with the next installation of their studies in the next post.

Moulton’s colleagues at Cambridge University were sceptical and dismissive about these processes and blocked his progress. Unfortunately, his innovative ideas could go no further at Cambridge - they crashed and burned. It's probable that Moulton’s colleagues were concerned about issues such as quality assurance and the means through which assessment of learning would be achieved and authenticated. They may also have been appalled at the incredible logistics that would be involved. It is not known how Moulton planned to address such issues. I'm also wondering how many of these issues remain a concern today in our digital world?

Like most pioneers and trailblazers however, Moulton refused to lie down. He persevered, and realised that his future obviously resided elsewhere than in Cambridge, England. He subsequently immigrated to the United States where he took up a post on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Here he eventually realised his dream and in 1892 was able to establish the first degree programme delivered via correspondence course. I guess we owe Moulton a lot for his tenacity.

Tomorrow: Part 4: Making a difference

Image source

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

Image source

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.

Image source