Teaching at a Distance

Connected is the work of a group called Foreign Exchange. What makes this work significant, besides the music and the lyrics, is that it was the product of a true foreign exchange between two artists who were connected only by the internet. Emcee Phonte Coleman of North Carolina and Nicolay Rook of the Netherlands collaborated on the album without ever meeting face to face. But, the challenges of the project were larger than just the connection speeds and the distance. On a recent interview for NPR, Coleman said: “Doing this project was how I learned computers. I didn’t even have a computer at my house so pretty much the album was made by me just using all my friends computers and DSL lines and such. And, that was kind of challenge because we were six hours apart.”

Those who face the challenges of teaching at a Distance, often feel that the physical distance is an inhibator to learning, but the work of these two artists should be convincing enough that if someone truly wants to learn something, distance does not matter. It often does require, however, a different way of doing and looking at things, especially "old ways" of communicating and instruction.

The nature of this "Foreign Exchange", from an educator's point of view, was that it was project-based and had real world application. But, one thing it had that many of our classes do not have, is intrinsic motivation. That is that the participants created their own learning experience. In the classroom, it is often the instructor that provides the motivation. I know, from my own personal experiences that one of the things I enjoyed most about school was listening to my professors talk about their subject matter, especially when there was a palpable passion for it (which increases interest in a particular topic and thus motivation) and anecdotal information that helped me grasp the underlying concepts.

What we have learned about How People Learn is in order "to develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: a. have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, b. understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and c. organize knowledge in way that facilitate retrieval and application." (How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice). The manner in which an instructor presents information, can therefore effect the deeper understanding of factual knowledge.

The Coonections project was what we would term in education as project-based and had real world application. While lectures (or what we term as lectures) should not be the primary source of information in a classroom, the lecture can provide the spark as well as the framework into which learning can build.

My hope is that this section will encourage online instructors to think, not just about the factual material they present, but how it is presented. I want to encourage them to bring to their online classrooms the anecdotal information and passion for the subject matter, that their f2f students experience. One way to easily do that, is by simply adding audio to their online classrooms. Research by Richard Mayer and others, demonstrates that audio (and animation specifically designed to facilitate learning) added to a multimedia presentation (like a powerpoint slideshow), can dramatically increase it's effectiveness. We will be adding explanations on how to do this, but for now begin with "Better Multimedia"

Some of the software programs I highly recommend you take a look at:

Audacity

OpenOffice

Camtasia Studio/Snagit

Impatica

Hot Potatoes

To check out our Moodle (Learning Management System) site click here