Theories in Distance Education

Long-distance or remote visitors accessing a museum’s resources participate in a learning experience that differs significantly from in-person visitors to a museum. Consider the real-life learning experience related in the following anecdote:

One of Ms. Anderson’s most exciting days was when she took her class on a “virtual fieldtrip” to visit the Louvre and understand how it has progressed from a royal fortress to the museum it is today. Ms. Anderson developed an activity for her students to visit the Louvre website and “explore” the current and past exhibits. Her students progressed through the exhibits, viewed the numerous online photo galleries, and were excited to get started. After about ten minutes, Jenna, a student in Ms. Anderson’s class, raised her hand and asked, “What do we do now? Ms. Anderson replied, “This is the lesson.” (Doering)

Museums developing programs and resources for long-distance or remote audiences must take into account the unique learning environment established in a remote context. Existing theories in distance education can be applied to the design and development of content intended to reach an audience physically separated from the museum. 

What is Distance Education?

Although experts have yet to agree upon one standard definition of “distance education,” there are many elements in common among the various definitions.  One definition that is mostly relevant to museums as sources of distance education is that of Michael Simonson, who states:

“Distance education is defined as institution-based, formal education where the learning group is separated, and where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources, and instructors.” (2006)

Thus a distance education program by a museum would, according to this definition:

1) Be institutionally-based: In this case, the institution providing the distance education would be the museum rather than a university or traditional school.  While museums are more oriented towards informal education in general, their resources and programs can be incorporated into formal education as illustrated above, especially in long-distance or remote applications.

2) Have a separation of teacher and student:  This can mean geographical distance (such as a videoconference between a museum in Boston and students in London), chronological distance (such as an online student guide that can be downloaded at any time after it has been posted by the museum, and does not require the educator and student to be present simultaneously), or both.

3) Have interactive telecommunications: This means both the media used to communicate over distances--such as the Internet, videoconferencing, etc--and the presence of some kind of interaction between students (or the audiences at large for museums) and instructors (i.e. the museums or museum educators), whether it be direct two-way communication over a medium like video, or a place for the audience to leave comments or upload their own videos and pictures.

4) Have a sharing of Data, Voice, and Video (Learning Experiences):  This refers to there being some kind of content shared to create a learning experience for the participants--in the case of museums, it could be anything from a podcast (voice) or educational video to facts and figures about an exhibit theme.

Theories in Distance Education

Just as there is no single definition of distance education, there are also a number of theories surrounding it, among which are the following:

Equivalency Theory (An American Theory of Distance Education): Originating in the environment of “virtual classrooms” and other such education, the equivalency theory of distance education contests the idea that distance education needs to provide instructional situations for students identical to those in local schools.  Rather, Simonson theorizes that the emphasis of distance educators should be on creating equivalent learning experiences, which will achieve similar outcomes, but through different instructional strategies, resources, and activities.  According to this theory, distance education is not a distinct field of education, but rather one that merely appeals to different preferred learning styles.

Key to this theory is the idea of the ‘learning experience,’ defined as “anything that promotes learning, including what is observed, felt, heard or done” (Simonson 2006).  The theory notes that different students may require a different mix of learning experiences--such as more observing or more hands-on activities--and that distance education instructors and designers should take care to “anticipate and provide the collection of experiences that will be the most suitable for each student or group of students” (Simonson 2006).

Museums of course provide many learning experiences, but this theory suggests that while attempting to engage long-distance audiences they should:

• Try to provide learning experiences that are equivalent to those that could be encountered at the museum in person, and that strive towards equivalent outcomes, even if using different instructional methods.
• Provide lessons/activities that appeal to different groups of students with different learning styles.
• Treat their online and long-distance education programs and components as part of their overall educational agenda, not distinct from the education going on within the physical museum.

Connectivism:  Emerging principally from the work of George Siemens, connectivism suggests that learning is the process of building networks of information and applying those resources to real problems. Connectivist learning, ubiquitous in the Internet age, assumes that the role of the learner is not to remember or even necessarily understand all areas of knowledge, but to have the capacity to research and apply knowledge to real-world situations. Connectivism also suggests that learning is based as much upon production as consumption of educational content.

Implications of this theory suggest that a museum wishing to engage long-distance audiences should:

• expose the audience to networks of information they can rely on, and provide opportunities for them to become proficient in navigating those networks
• provide opportunities for the audience to create resources demonstrating understanding (e.g. podcasts, blog posts, etc)
• make accessible the interactions and productions of previous users/groups, to build a learning community
• collaborate with the audience to set mutual objectives and establish a dialogue to mitigate the distance barrier

Theory of Independent Study:  Michael Moore examines distance learning in the 1970s through the distance between teacher and learner and the autonomy of the learner in his theory of independent study.The distance between teacher and learner in a distance learning situation is not physical distance, but the amount of interaction between the two parties. Moore’s distance can be measured by the amount of dialogue between learner and teacher and how responsive the program or instructor is to the needs of the learner. 

In traditional educational settings, the learner is usually dependent on the teacher. However, in distance education, the learner may take on more responsibility for his/her learning. Moore classifies distance learning into autonomous (learner-directed) or non-autonomous (teacher-driven). To determine whether a program is autonomous or non-autonomous, consider which party chose the objective, resources, methods of study, and evaluation techniques. 

Implications for museum distance learning programs:

• Offer a wide variety of options for distance learners. Some learners or groups of learners may desire varying degrees of autonomy when working with a museum’s distance learning programs.
• Engage each learner or group about the kind of distance learning experience they are looking for.
• Understand that while a distance learner may be autonomous in coming to a museum as a resource, he/she may be searching for different levels of distance from their instructor.  

Resources and Further Reading:

Anderson, Terry and Jon Dron. “Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy.” The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. 12:3 (2011).

Chaney, Beth H. “History, Theory, and Quality Indicators of Distance Education: A Literature Review.”  Texas A&M University. http://ohi.tamu.edu/distanceed.pdf

Doering, Aaron, Miller, Charles, and George Veletsianos. “Adventure Learning: Educational, social, and technological affordances for collaborative hybrid distance education.” Quarterly Review of Distance Education.

Schlosser, Lee Ayers and Simonson, Michael. (2006). Distance Education: Definition and Glossary of Terms, 2nd Edition. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.  http://www.schoolofed.nova.edu/bpol/pdf/distancelearning_def.pdf