Vocabulary Building: Part Une

Let us look first at the concepts of distance education and distance learning.

Well, Distance Learning is probably primary, because it is literally learning at a distance, but the two terms are more or less interchangeable; "distance education" is really more about formal coursework as opposed to simply learning about something through media (newspapers, TV) as opposed to personal experience (teachers, actually doing).

Historical research using that vaunted library of factoids, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_education) has told me that the concept of distance education of actual lessons was first attested to in Boston in 1728. It was in shorthand, and so were later lessons. I think there is an interesting metaphor here, because these instructions were delivered largely by the postal system, and focused on shorthand, which was after all a method of data compression and encoding - a skill one could learn in order to write down words or events quickly and thus have a more efficiently gained written record.

Anyway, the core concept is that these courses are done through mostly pre-created materials distributed to the learner at a regular interval, and then presumably returned for marking. There is a concept which must be dealt with, however, which is NOT in our list! But Wikipedia once again comes to my rescue. This concept is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_distance

An interesting concept. I thought that it made a lot of sense and was easily digested once I had reframed it in terms of things I knew; basically, it refers to the 'cycle' of a communication and the necessity of the frequency of them. Dialogue, as mentioned, is a key part of this -- namely being able to ask a question and get a quick answer on a potentially minor tidbit.
Also important, though only briefly touched on in the Wikipedia definition, was "structure." I assume this meant framing the study so that various matters were presented in a logical order that tended to build on one another, and also perhaps making sure that the materials could be understood easily. The last part, learner motivation, could be increased but is to some extent beyond one's ready control.

The topics also came up of synchronous and asynchronous learning. I had encountered these terms before in discussions of communication. Conventional classroom instructions, and its various other forms listed, which focus on things which require attendance, so to speak, at a given time are compared to "asynchronous" technologies, which are something that one can approach at one's own pace and which do not revolve primarily around immediate communication. This certainly has the advantage of not requiring as much staffing.

I did find the listing of a message board as asynchronous, and internet radio as synchronous, to be a bit odd based on my idea of the matters, but I suppose it makes sense; internet radio is usually not "recorded" and then put up as a podcast (presumably the podcast would fall under the same heading as audiocassette, and thus, asynchronous) even if it is also not at all interactive, while message boards, while interactive -- you talk to others and get replies, possibly even quite quickly -- are not fundamentally so, and the wait could be more like hours or days.

At the same time this seems to imply that there needs to be a third category. Material such as pre-made web lessons or, to be a little more iconoclastic, "books" are clearly asynchronous, but does a web forum post thread have more in common with that or with direct linked contact (as in face to face or teleconferencing)? I would be inclined to say there's a third segment here, which I will call "demi-synchronous" for want of a better term, and which I will define as "those methods of communication and learning which involve feedback within a meaningful time frame, but not necessarily instantly." Examples would be "email office hours" and message boards that are rather rigorously monitored.