The Dance of Technology and Pedagogy in Self-Paced Distance Education
Terry Anderson, Canada Research Chair in Distance Education
Athabasca University, Canada
Summary
This paper describes the dance like relationship between pedagogy and technologies
that creates distance education programming. Using a dance metaphor, the paper
describes earlier generation of distance education and notes the evolving role of the selfpaced learner as a focus of distance education. The paper argues that control of the
learning sequence is an important pedagogical issue and that new tools of networked
learning can afford opportunities for social interaction, while retaining self-paced
programming control. The paper explores and defines connectivism as a pedagogical
lens to look at both learning activities and technologies.
Self-paced instruction of the past century challenged older models of education based
upon seat time in lectures. In this century self-paced instruction challenges both seatbased lectures and predominate group and cohort based models of distance education.
Though disruptive to these older models it promises a model of education that
maximizes individual freedoms and choice, supports participative course designs and
thus is a an appropriate new dance for the networked era.
Short Description:
This paper describes the dance like relationship between pedagogy and technologies
that create distance education programming. The paper argues that control of the
learning sequence is an important pedagogical issue and that new tools of networked
learning can afford opportunities for social interaction, while retaining self-paced
programming control. The paper explores and defines connectivism as a pedagogical
lens to look at both learning activities and technologies.
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Main Paper
The Dance of Technology and Pedagogy in Self-Paced Distance Education
Terry Anderson, Canada Research Chair in Distance Education
Athabasca University
Introduction: Although distance education educators like to assert that the pedagogy
alone defines their distance learning designs, it is only in a complex dance between
technologies and pedagogies that quality distance education emerges. The technology
sets the beat and the timing. The pedagogy defines the moves. Both the design and the
technology morph in response to developments or changes in theory and technological
affordances. Further, the creative energy and context created by the participants also
effects the dance. As any change occurs, the dance is thrown out of synchronization and
all parties adjust their activities and their plans to return to the creative flow of the dance.
In this paper I discuss the disruptive effects of a pervasive Internet and the network
software applications that run upon it. In particular I look at the capacity to create a much
enriched dance among those self-paced distance learners who, until very recently were
forced to dance alone!
Distance education has always been primarily concerned with access issues. Access
implies a host of sub factors that extend much beyond the simplistic considerations of
geographic distance. As early as 1981 Charles Wedemeyer talked about access in
terms of time, content, affordability, skills and efficacy (Wedemeyer, 1981). Paulsen
(Paulsen, 1993, 2008) added access issues that are encapsulated in the media
(affordability, efficacy, availability etc) and we have written (Anderson, Annand & Wark,
2005) about access and freedom in terms of the type of learning/teaching relationship
with other learners and with teachers. Throughout the 150 year development of distance
education, the dance between technology and pedagogy has taken many turns, dives
and tempos, but it continues to grow in popularity and more importantly practicality, as
the only means to meet emergent needs of 21st century learners in all regions of the
world danie (Daniel, Kanwar & Uvalic-Trumbic, 2006)l.
The first generation of distance education was conceived of as a form of individual
dance. The student was free to interpret the design and the content as they wished,
within temporal boundaries set by themselves with only infrequent contact with tutors.
But it was mostly a lonely experience, with none of the social support, excitement and
motivation of other dancers and only infrequent and usually asynchronous text
interaction with teachers or tutors. This first generation was an individual experience,
because that was all that was afforded by the correspondence mail technology. Early
distance education theorists (Holmberg, 1989); (Keegan, 1990) celebrated the
independence that became associated with models of correspondence study and noted
the intricate moves possible when a single student set the tempo for their own unique
learning expression. However, the dance was confining and certainly did not meet the
need of episiotomies based upon community creation of knowledge, pedagogies based
on collaborative, cooperative or connected interaction, nor the learning needs of
individuals with low levels of personal autonomy.
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The second generation of distance education could be considered the golden age of big
media. The full orchestra became available to the dancers, but like those watching the
Hollywood dance movies of the 60’s the experience was vicarious as learners consumed
the dance through the moves of others. These full scale productions gave rise to vast
increases in visibility and exposure (ie broadcast of university programs) but still resulted
in passive observations, rather than active engagement.
The third generation of distance education challenged the notions of time and sociality
by introducing the beat from technologies that supported both synchronous and
asynchronous interactions - most of which were distributed to cohorts of distributed
learners. Dance choreographers now were able to choose from one-to-one, one to a few
to one to many and all permutations to create complex structures of communications
between and among learners. These new affordances created pressure from pedagogy
to match these new affordances, giving rise to collaborative and cooperative distance
learning pedagogies (Garrison & Shale, 1987). This 3rd generation celebrated the group
synchronization afforded through synchronized technologies of audio, video and web
conferencing as well as asynchronous models (computer conferencing) of group based
distance education. In the rush to embrace the pedagogies of the classroom that now
were afforded at distance, many of the freedoms associated with early generation of the
distance education dance were lost. Most third generation systems demand that
individuals wait for their study until the ballroom opens (start of the semester) and
demand that each series of dances be squeezed or stretched into a 13 or 26-week
semester. Moreover, this model has not been demonstrated to be cost effective
(Annand, 1999; Rumble, 2004; Fielden, 2002). Nor has it been shown to be scalable few published accounts of such cohort-based programming support more than thirty
students per teacher in a class and a very frequent outcome is that teachers find such
delivery dances to require more time expenditure than equivalent courses delivered on
campus (Jones & Johnson-Yale, 2005; Lazarus, 2003)
We are now the threshold of a new dance and perhaps a new generation of distance
education that marries the affordances of big media production, collaborative interaction
and individual pacing. This next generation uses the technologies of ubiquitous
networked coordination and collaboration, distributed throughout the globe and affords
opportunities for individuals to find each other, study and work ensemble, support and
challenge each other and yet still retain the fundamental freedoms of pacing and start
and completion dates. I refer to this not as independent study but as self-paced,
connectivist learning. This emerging generation of distance dance allows learners to
create their own social and individual moves that meet not only their educational, but
also their social, emotional and economic needs as they engage in the lifelong learning
dance.
Connectivism - The pedagogy of self-paced networked learning
The pedagogy of these dances (and there are many moves and rhythms) beats to a
connectivist drum. Siemens (2005) describes the following characteristics of
connectivism:
* Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions: This diversity comes not only
from the learning objects created and assembled by the course authors but by the
comments and augmentations (in multiple formats) left by learners as they engage with
the content.
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* Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources: The
networked content becomes a growing artifact as learners and teachers augment it with
links to new resources, personal insights and experiences of the content as they are
created or discovered.
* Learning may reside in non-human appliances – Learners create connections not
only to new resources but also through the profiles, comments and invitations of other
learners to fellow dancers.
* Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known – the emergent
nature of connectivist learning underscores the transient and ever growing set of human
and non human resources that augment our understanding of any complex topic.
Connectivist learners realize that content is never fully mastered, but what counts is the
capacity to continuously learn and as importantly to apply that learning in relevant
contexts.
* Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
Relationships begun in networked connectivist learning need not terminate at the end of
a course, Rather networked learning is best located outside of restrictive firewalls of
institutions, such that learners are not excluded when they graduate.
* Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
Connectivist tools such as mind and concept maps, data mining, collaborative creation
and annotation tools serve to help learners build and develop internal and external
representations of connections between ideas, contexts and humans.
* Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning
activities. Connectivist content never stale dates as it is never finished. Rather, content
evolves in response to edits and augmentations that results from interactions with
learners, teachers and other content sources (Anderson, 2003),
* Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the
meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While
there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the
information climate affecting the decision: Self-paced, connectivist learners are not
constrained to waiting until semester begins and conversely the learning semester need
never end. Rather, teachers and designers build in tests and projects that allow learners
to demonstrate their mastery and as importantly their capacity to continue learning the
subject of the inquiry.
The near infinite potential of dancing with anyone, anywhere, anytime coupled with the
vast sound tracks and light shows (open educational resources) accessible on the Net,
demand that learning be an experience of connecting and applying resources, rather
than memorizing particular tunes or steps. The art of improvisation, of learning to dance,
becomes the life learning skill - accumulating static data or memorizing scripts becomes
obsolete.
Affordances of self- paced learning technologies.
The driving technology for this emergent next generation of self-paced connected
generation of distance education is based on networked social technologies. Social
technologies have been defined by many - often noting the affordances of network tools
to support user in discovering each other and subsequently working and playing
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together. I have defined the application of social software in distance education as “as
networked tools that support and encourage individuals to learn together while retaining
individual control over their time, space, presence, activity, identity” (Anderson, 2006).
These in turn afford a variety of learning activities and personal and impersonal learning
resources. After Siemens and Tittenberger (2009) I have created a matrix of major
affordances of the web 2.0 social networking tools. These can be listed across the top of
table and a column of social software tools can evaluated (subjectively or empirically) by
scoring the capacity to support this affordance. (see Table 1)
Table 1. Affordances of networked learning tools and contexts
Content Discovery: Many of the new Web 2.0 tools provide flexible access to general
purpose and subject specific search engines. However, social searchers also use the
learners membership in certain groups, or networks to utilize the filtering provided by the
preferences of these subsets of the whole to guide, validate and select certain valued
resources. For example a bot might be able to determine the paths of successful
learners and recommend them to new learners (Koper, 2005).
Presence. This affords capacity for social software to make presence visible, affords
self-paced learners the opportunities to meet each, forming study buddies or study
groups. These dancers may meet synchronously (chat, web , audio or video
conferencing) or asynchronously(voice or text messages, email, blogs and twitter).
Critical to finding each other is the concept of presence. Social software allows learners
(and teachers) to find each other by the traces they leave of their activity (blog, wiki and
Twitter postings) and through their visible presence in chat rooms, immersive
environments and in resource data bases. Further, they may be able to meet face-toface if geographic constraints can be overcome. These gatherings and resultant social
support can become the critical social integration (Tinto, 1975, 1987) that has been
shown in many attrition studies to make the difference between dropout and
perservenace in formal education. For example Kember (1995) asserts that " social
integration can be achieved, even in the face of an inhospitable social environment, if a
time and space for study are negotiated" (p. 88). Of course, that negotiation is mostly
among learners, who negotiate the time and place of their cooperative study, the focus
of their work together (studying for an examination, peer tutoring, rehearsing
presentations etc.) and the nature of the study group relationships that they wish and are
capable of filling.
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Communication: It hardly needs further celebration or elaboration to note the very
drastic cuts in communications costs (through use of tools such as Skype, and other
web conferencing tools) and hardware that can now be incorporated into online learning.
These communications may be synchronous or asynchronous, text, audio, video or
immersive and all sorts of combinations. The very rich, accessible, recordable and
affordable affordances of networked communications creates opportunities for
communication that rival (in choice and accessibility) if not in richness that is available
face-to-face.
Reflection: Research on the value of reflection to apply, contextualize and deepen
learning is extensive. However only recently has work begun on the unique affordances
of blog tools to support and disseminate (within controlled audiences) these reflections.
Shoffner (2005) in a study of blog use with pre-service teachers notes that “If you write it
down, you have to think about it” – while offering a fresh space for reflective thought, the
option of communal feedback, and the ease of electronic availability.” P. 2095. While
Richardson (2006) notes the wide raging increase in attentiveness and motivation when
reflections are made visible to others. The individual ownership of blogs creates a space
for learners to create and develop their own web presence that is persistent and lasts
beyond a single course or program.
Collaboration: Formal networked learning involves the design and orchestration of
learning activities developed by teachers or instructional designers and included as a
formal part of the course. The self-paced nature of student participants make these
cooperative activities much more challenging in self-paced than in paced forms of
distance education. Almost all of the literature on cooperative and collaborative learning
in distance education assumes that students are progressing through a program of
studies in a cohort that begins and ends study in a synchronous time frame. Paulsen
(2008) argues that activities for self-paced learners must be “compelling but not
compulsory”. They must operate on cycles so that learners can synchronize their
learning schedules for short or long periods of time, in order to engage in the type of
cooperative dance that meets their individual and temporal needs. Some of these
activities may be completely asynchronous, but all must engage learners. Often this
engagement requires the inducement of formal appraisal and course grade awarded by
teachers, however the mark may also include self or peer evaluation to inform the
teacher’s mark.
Conclusion:
This short paper has defined the emerging affordances of an old dance – that being the
capacity to open distance education to learners who set their own pace and timing for
their learning engagement. New technologies, web 2.0 software applications and
connectivist pedagogies are merging to create these opportunities. Self-paced
instruction of the past century challenged older models of education based upon seat
time in lectures. In this century self-paced instruction challenges both seat-based
lectures and predominate group and cohort based models of distance education.
Though disruptive to these older models it promises a model of education that
maximizes individual freedoms and choice, supports participative course designs and
thus is a an appropriate new dance for the networked era.
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