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A Good Match: Lifelong Learning and Distance Education
by Karen Novick
If you read the popular media, you know that much attention has been focused on distance education (DE) degree programs offered by a variety of universities and for-profit organizations. Much less coverage has been given, however, to another distance education activity that is having a significant impact on the way we learn and work: continuing education delivered via distance technologies. For those of us in the library field, the ability to participate in special continuing education (CE) programs available only through distance education is one of the very positive by-products of the rise of electronic technologies.
Distance education is generally defined as an educational experience in which the instructor/presenter and students/participants are separated by space, or time, or both. The old correspondence courses, in which teachers and students used the U.S. mail to send course material back and forth, were an early and low-tech model of distance education. Those courses served the same purpose that current distance education methods do: to enable people who cannot come to a particular location at a specific time to participate in education provided by an organization.
Technology currently being used to deliver DE includes interactive video and TV, satellite transmissions, cable broadcasting, CDs, and, of course, the Internet. Some of this distance learning is synchronous, meaning that the instructor and students are participating at the same time but in different places. Interactive television and live webcasting accompanied by chat are examples of synchronous DE.
Other DE is asynchronous, so all the participants are not "in class" at the same time. Web-based courses with threaded discussions are the most prevalent example of asynchronous DE. Threaded discussions allow people to respond to a given discussion question over a given period of time, allowing, for example, people to post their first responses over a couple of days and then respond to each other over the next few days. Some instructional designs allow for classes that include both synchronous and asynchronous DE.
One issue in the design of a distance education program is whether or not a class involves a cohort group as part of the learning experience. Cohorts are simply people participating in an experience together. For shorter types of educational programs, such as a two- hour program delivered via satellite, cohort groups are less important. You could probably watch a program like that alone and have a good learning experience. Some distance education is in fact designed to be undertaken alone, such as a self-paced tutorial delivered on the Web. The tutorial might provide self-tests for you along the way to make sure you understand one section before you move onto the next, and also provide e-mail or phone access to an instructor so you can ask questions about content you do not understand.
On the other hand, most people find it difficult to complete a semester-long course or an entire degree program on their own, with no interaction with fellow students. For this type of educational experience, participation with classmates can be critical to your understanding of the material and to your success in the class. Studies of distance education programs have found that there is a larger drop-out rate in programs where there are no cohort groups. For both these reasons, most providers of longer classes and programs enroll people into programs in cohort groups.
For library staff members (and all other working adults!), "CE via DE" offers wonderful possibilities. It allows you to structure your lifelong learning around your work and family schedules. It reduces or eliminates commuting time to classes. It may allow you to listen to a presentation by an expert in a field whom you might not be able to travel to see. And it allows you to take advantage of classes offered by providers who are not physically close to your home or office.
The number of DE continuing education programs for library staff is increasing each year. For example, programs delivered via satellite are sponsored on an ad hoc basis by the American Library Association (ALA) and its many divisions and by the Special Libraries Association (SLA). The College of DuPage (Ill.) has run a very popular series via satellite for library assistants each year. Many colleges and some schools and public libraries have the equipment to downlink this type of transmission.
A number of library schools offer asynchronous continuing education classes via the Internet, including:
- University of Wisconsin,
- University of Buffalo (their Internet classes are part of their MLS program but you can enroll in them as continuing education,
- University of Toronto,
- University of Pittsburgh, and
- Rutgers University. At Rutgers we offer a number of individual classes you can take totally online, as well as an online Certificate Program in Youth Literature and Technology, designed as a post-degree program for individuals who want to pursue advanced studies in youth literature. We hope to offer more online programs in the future.
Self-paced tutorials are offered by the continuing education program at Toronto's Faculty of Information Studies. OCLC has just announced its first self-paced module, and evidently more will follow. SLA has just discontinued its series of self-paced tutorials, but it still offers videos of past programs, as does ALA.
Often overlooked by library people are the many DE programs offered by providers outside of our field that are very appropriate for library staff. For example, the American Management Association has a variety of self-paced online programs, and hundreds of colleges and universities offer individual asynchronous courses you can take as continuing education.
While participating in a seminar or taking a class that is mediated by technology will have a very different feel to it than being in a room with your colleagues, the feedback I get from DE participants is that a DE course can be as richly rewarding as any other educational experience, and it allows for the possibility of lifelong learning you might never otherwise be able to accomplish.
Karen Novick is Director of Professional Development Studies, the continuing education program at Rutgers University's School of Communication, Information and Library Studies. She is a former public library director. Her department's web site can be found at http://scils.rutgers.edu/pds/