Functional Organization of Distance Education

Question 1

AUTONOMOUS DISTANCE EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS (Bates, 2005)

Answer 1

• Print and broadcast based open universities
• Online autonomous distance universities
• Virtual institutes

Question 2

DUAL-MODE INSTITUTIONS (Bates, 2005)

Answer 2

• Often the numbers of distance students in dual mode institutions are relatively small
• many dual mode institutions have increasingly been moving into Internet- based delivery.
• To maintain teacher—student ratios of around 1:30, essential for online teaching in many subjects, more contract instructors would need to have been hired.

Question 3

FOR-PROFIT DISTANCE EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS (Bates 2005)

Answer 3

• Private e-learning universities (nearly all be unaccredited)
• Not-for-profit university spin-offs ( operates outside the normal internal university academic approval procedures and on a strictly commercial basis)

Question 4

PARTNERSHIPS AND CONSORTIA (Bates, 2005)

Answer 4

• University joint degree programme partnerships
• Public-private partnerships
• State or national consortia
• International consortia
• For-profit consortia

Question 5

WORKPLACE TRAINING AND CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES (Bates, 2005)

Answer 5

• Private e-learning companies
• Corporate universities
• Professional associations

Question 6

Courses and Programs (Moore & Kearsley 2011)

Answer 6

• adaptation of the classroom course delivered in the parent institution
• not necessarily an online course
• What is common
  ○ it has both learners and a teacher,
  ○ content organized around a set of learning objectives,
  ○ some designed learning experiences,
  ○ some form of evaluation
• A course is more than content
• A program - collection of its courses

Question 7

Why Distance Education?

Answer 7

○ increasing access to
○ providing opportunities for updating skills
○ improving the cost effectiveness
○ improving the quality
○ enhancing the capacity
○ balancing inequalities
○ delivering education to specific target audiences
○ providing emergency training
○ expanding the capacity in new subject areas
○ offering combination of education with work and family life
○ adding an international dimension

Question 8

Components of a Working Distance Education System (Moore & Kearsley, 2011)

Answer 8

○ a source of content knowledge and teaching
○ a course design subsystem to structure this into materials and activities
○ a subsystem that delivers the courses to learners through media and technology
○ instructors and support personnel who interact with learners as they use these materials
○ learners in their different environments
○ a management subsystem to organize policy, needs assessment, and resource allocation; to evaluate outcomes; ○ ○ and to coordinate other subsystems

Question 9

The instructional designers should work with the content experts to help them decide on such matters as:

Answer 9

1. the learning objectives of the course and each of its component parts,
2. the exercises and activities the learners should undertake to achieve the objectives,
3. the layout of text and graphics,
4. the content of recorded audio or video segments, and
5. the questions for interactive sessions

Question 10

Interaction: The Role of Instructors (Moore & Kearsley, 2011)

Answer 10

• In a well-structured system, the interactions between instructors and students will be based on issues and questions determined by the course designers, who include, of course, the content experts
• it is common for the interaction to be conducted by specialist instructors who might have played little or no part in the processes of designing the course.
• instruction requires a special set of skills,
• It is the course design team that sets assignments
• designers can set up cooperative learner groups, and instructors are in a position to facilitate peer support and student knowledge construction.
• Student support personnel may deal with problems arising from poor study techniques

Question 11

‘quality circle’ approach in developing DE courses (Bandalaria, 2007)

Answer 11

• course writer (who is a subject matter expert),
• subject matter specialist (another subject matter expert who peer reviews the soundness of the course and its contents),
• instructional designer (who ensures the ‘chunking of lessons’ is appropriate and that the program/ course goals, contents, and assessments mesh logically with one another),
• media specialist (who recommends appropriate delivery mediums),
• language editor (who performs copy and substantive editing).

Question 12

Lessons Learned (Bandalaria, 2007)

Answer 12

• ensure that any technology used is both pedagogically sound and socially-driven.
• Access and cost of access must be attainable and affordable for students
• Partnerships and collaboration are strategies that can work to reduce costs associated with DE
• requires attendant changes in organizational structures, such as new units and/ or integration of existing units
• the research component of DE projects must inform the selection and subsequent use of any new technology.
• beware of reinventing the wheel and instead seek to creative use of technologies that are already readily available