Distance Education Experience
As I reflect on my experience with online courses or trainings. I remember a time when I felt as though I was doing something very futuristic. Here is the program called Access Distance Learning. Where I worked as a full time facilitator. This was way before the pandemic. I would often think to myself, wow, these students have a much different opportunity that we did in my day.
Access offers courses that student’s couldn’t normally take. I remember in my second year, there was this young man who was taking Mandarin as a course. This program really gave students an opportunity to experience what future ready schools looked like. I even started to see how much prepared students who took Access compared to the ones who didn’t.
This online learning showed me what type of students I had. And let me mentioned this, Access was not easy for everyone. Access had a lot of failures in some courses. A course like Business Tech Applications was a successful elective. But many students struggle with a core class. So this brings me back to what I was about to say.
My students who were successful even if they just passed with a C, were well prepared for the future. When I was facilitating this program at my high school it was very new. A lot of kids were intimidated with Access courses because they heard it was “hard.” The “hard” part was the fact that the platform was something new. And there was a lot of work to be done without someone breathing down your neck.
You have to learn how to focus and manage your time. The same things that I must possess in my pursuit on my Ed.S online. Everything those students were doing is the same thing that I had to learn how to do. But I was learning that then. I was there when they changed up their LMS. So to me, just the experience alone was positive for my students.
My vision was to have the whole student body to have taken one course before they graduated because I knew it would be something they would use in the future. I also knew that online classes would be an option and taking a course in Access would prepare them well. This was positive. The negative part of it all sort of mirrors the positives. Because Access was so new, it was intimidating to the students and to me as well. Because of that failures were high in that first semester year.
Things could have been approved if I was better prepared and maybe have taken a course like this at that point. But back then, I only received the Access training, which wasn’t enough for beginning. But we were on a time deadline so I had to learn more as I did and as the students took more courses. Eventually I got really good and my student pass rate was well over 80%. The only failures I was getting after a certain point were those students who didn’t put in the time.
Even though I’m not in that role anymore and haven’t been in some years now. That experience helped me as I pursue higher education online. You have to put in the time and stay on top of things. The same things I would tell my students. The text reading explained a big difference in virtual learning during the pandemic and distance learning. I’ve talked about my experience with Access distance learning years before the pandemic. Read what the text mentions.
"Increasingly, web-based video systems such as Zoom are being used to deliver live instruction. This approach is called synchronous distance learning. Recently, World Wide Web courses have been offered to learners anywhere they have access and whenever they choose. This approach is called asynchronous distance learning” (Simonson, Smaldino, Zvacek, 2019, p.10). This type of asynchronous learning is what was being done several years before the pandemic through the Access Distance Learning program.
I found another article that highlights something I mentioned earlier in this blog. I told you that success wasn’t high when we first brought Access to our students. One because it was so new, and for two, I wasn’t comfortable as a facilitator at the time due to the newness of the program. This article did a study to gage how teachers felt. “The analysis showed that teachers' beliefs in their own abilities in fulfilling the requirements of distance education, such as organizing effective learning environments and preparing different evaluation activities were not at a high level” (Tas, Eminoglu, Atila, Yildiz, Bozkurt, 2021).
For many, it seems distance education didn’t become a thing until Covid came around. But it seems to be a constant of how uncomfortable many were. I remember like yesterday how much stress the older coworkers had on them and even some of the younger ones because the distance education format just wasn’t a thing at that point for most.
Thank god for my experience with Access. Just as my first blog I’ve ever composed, things got better over time. You learn new things and you understand what you are doing more. At this point, 2 years or so after Covid hit, I’d like to think our educators are more prepared to support distant education. There should be no argument about that statement at all!
For more advantages of distance education check out this short video!
References
Simonson, M. R., Smaldino, S. E., & Zvacek, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of Distance Education. Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Tas, Y., Eminoglu, S:, Atila, G., Yildiz, Y., & Bozkurt, U (2021). Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Opinions about Distance Education during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 22(4), 229-253.
Darryl,
ReplyDeleteStudents these days definitely have a lot more opportunities than I did during high school. I was in the first AP class that my school offered and that was a big learning experience for both the teacher and the students. Now fast forward to today where students have the option for dual enrollment and even distance learning. I love how the experiences that make us step out of our comfort zones are the ones we seem to learn the most from. This was my experience with teaching first graders virtually. I also wish that there had been more time for training, but like you, we just didn’t have that opportunity. Simonson et al. (2019) states that "training of students and instructors learning and teaching at a distance is related to effectiveness and satisfaction" and that "technical support for students and instructors is critical" (p. 75). As a virtual teacher, I was very thankful that Shelby County Technology Department was always available to help us. They even created how-to videos that we could share with the parents of our students. I am thankful that students of today have more educational opportunities than ever before, and distance education has allowed for many of these opportunities. Distance education has become a normal part of education with statistics showing its continued growth (Sutiah et al., 2020).
Thank you for sharing your experience!
References
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7th ed.). Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Sutiah, S., Slamet, S., Shafqat, A., & Supriyono, S. (2020). Implementation of distance learning during the COVID-19 in faculty of education and teacher training. Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences, 15(5), 1204–1214.
Darryl,
ReplyDeleteYour comparison of ACCESS to the pandemic experience was something I had not even thought about yet. Your example is perfect. At my school now, ACCESS courses are still deemed as “hard” even though every student has endured close to two years of virtual learning. Simonson et. al (2019) wrote, “interaction should not be the primary characteristic of instruction but should be available, commonplace, and relevant.” I have wondered if the design of the ACCESS courses could be tweaked for students to be more engaging so the students can begin feeling connected and motivated. Something my principal and I discussed a lot during the pandemic was that we were glad we had such a strong focus on building positive relationships. We felt that the connectedness we had prior to the pandemic helped bridge the digital gap of separation. Kobrin et. al (2021) stated that from their study of adult educators adopting technology that practitioners learned that many of the challenges they faced were shared by peers, and through this process received encouragement and motivation to continue. I think our sense of unity came from ripping the philosophical bandaid of tech integration and sharing similar frustrations with our colleagues. As frustrating as the pandemic was at times, I would not trade the experience for anything because it forced us all to grow professionally in some capacity. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
References
Kobrin, J., Nicole Bullock, P.-G., Gierke, J., & Heil, C. (2021). Adult educators adopting technology in their classrooms through innovation, collaboration, and Inquiry. Adult Literacy Education: The International Journal of Literacy, Language, and Numeracy, 3(1), 49–54. https://doi.org/10.35847/jkobrin.pbullock.jgierke.cheil.3.1.49
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7thed.). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Darryl,
ReplyDeleteStudents definitely have a lot more opportunities than when I was in school. I like how ambitious you were about every person completing an online class. I think it would set up nicely for the college platforms that offer online learning. The ones that took the class were very fortunate to have you. Simonson et al (2019) state, "children respond to direct, purposeful experiences, not only because they are young but also because they are learning many new things for the first time" (p. 82). This quote is so true. Like you said both students and teachers or adults any adult for that matter learn through the process and that can be daunting. I think distance education is very important. Especially platforms like Access. It can prepare students with digital literacy and communication skills. According to Kandemir and Cakmak (2021), "since technological platforms are the basic elements of communication, they should be used extensively in learning environments". Thank you for sharing!!
References
Kandemir, B., & Kiliç Çakmak, E. (2021). Structure in distance learning: A systematic literature review. Participatory Educational Research, 8(4), 139–170.
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (7th ed.). Information Age Publishing, Inc.