Instructor involvement in Distance Education

This week’s conference asked the following question:

What are the roles of the instructor in Distance Education course as compared to a face to face course?

Which led me to the following response:

As stated by Kuboni (1999) “the learning environment becomes a particular and important consideration. If this indeed true then it becomes a bigger picture than just the professor creating a course curriculum. Unless this professor is one of Information Technology, they would have a hard time turning this important information into an online atmosphere. I believe that is where most schools are going wrong with their distance education and as do many others who have written about the ongoing problems that afflict online learning.


As stated in the Theory and practice of online learning, “the dynamic nature of the online environment presents unique challenges for course developers and editors.” (Anderson & Elloumi) If there are challenges for the developers and editors what about professors who are asked to develop these courses on their own? This paper points out that several schools were quick to jump in the race for having a distance education program and did not take all the intricate into consideration. With these developments most schools did not take into account the cost that would be involved and this has caused them to cut corners in how the course will be developed.


All of these issues have brought sites about like the Sakai Project. This is where professionals in the field of education, development, and editing and information technologist have come together in a forum where they can share ideas and their skills in order to help others in the academia world. There are many sites like this out there for professors to join and try to learn more about what they are being asked to do.


There are also many other sites, like Elliminate, that offer complete classrooms for sale. In this forum schools can buy an already complete online classroom atmosphere that they can simply plug their information to and be up and running in no time. This type of learning tool seems to be a simple solution for professors who are leery to the distance education atmosphere.


So, why the instructor is still an intricate part of the online learning atmosphere they need assistance from developers and information technologist; unlike walking into a classroom with the material that they have developed for their course.

(2001). Elluminate Demos. Retrieved June 04, 2009, from Elluminate Web site: http://www.elluminate.com/demo/live_demo.jspT. Anderson. & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning (Second Edition). Retrieved July 29, 2008, from http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/second_edition.html