1. Distance Education
Zoaib Mirza
Promote Education
www.promoteeducation.com
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2. Topic of Discussions
• What is Distance Education?
• Levels of Distance Education
• Why Distance Education?
• Components of a Working Distance Education
System
• A Student at the Center of the System
• Five Generations of Distance Education
• Technologies and Media
• Design and Development of Web-Based
Courses
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3. What is Distance Education?
• Distance education is planned learning that
normally occurs in a different place from
teaching, requiring special course design and
instruction techniques, communication through
various technologies, and special organizational
and administrative arrangement
• Distance education is the study of:
– Learning and teaching
– Learning that is planned and not accidental
– Learning that is normally in a different place from
teaching
– Communication through various technologies
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4. Levels of Distance Education
• Single Mode Institutes
– Distance education is the sole activity of the single mode
institution
– All faculty and staff of the institution are exclusively devoted to
distance education
– Example Athabasca (http://www.athabascau.ca) is Canada
leading singe mode distance-education university
• Dual Mode Institutes
– On campus and online
– Sets up a special unit alongside the recourses dedicated to
conventional teaching
– Example: public agencies, voluntary organizations and
businesses that are not primarily educational institutions
• U.S National Part Services (http://www.telnps.net)
• Pennsylvania State University (http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu)
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5. Levels of Distance Education
• Individual Teachers
– Conventional institutions distrusting their teaching by
distance education methods do so without a especial
unit
– Lead individual teachers design and delver their own
courses
– No special unit
• Virtual Universities and Consortia
– The term “virtual” is used very loosely and applied at
times to all three types of organizations
• National Technological University (http://www.ntu.edu) ,
consortium of 50 universties
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6. Why Distance Education?
• Increasing access to learning and training opportunities
• Providing opportunities for updating skills
• Improving the cost effectiveness of education resources
• Supporting the quality of exiting educational structures
• Enhancing the capacity of the education system
• Balancing inequalities between age groups
• Delivering educational campaign to specific target
audience
• Providing emergency training for key target groups
• Expanding the capacity for education in new subject
areas
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7. Why Distance Education?
• Offering combination of education with
work and family life
• Adding an international dimension to the
educational experience
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8. Components of a Working Distance
Education System
• A source of knowledge that is to be taught and learned
• A subsystem to structure this into material and actives
for students hat we will call courses
• Another subsystem that delivers the courses to learners
• Teachers who interact with learners as they use these
material in making their knowledge
• Learners in their different environments
• A subsystem that monitors and evaluates outcomes so
that interventions are possible where failure occurs
• An organization with a policy and a management
structure to link these different pieces
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9. A Student at the Center of the
System
Administration
Instructor Course Design Team
Communication technologies
Distance learner
Virtual Library Support Services
Other students
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10. Five Generations of Distance
Education
• 1st – Correspondence
– Instructions delivered by mail
• 2nd – Broadcast radio and television
– Radio
– Television
• 3rd – Open Universities
– Open University in UK
• 4th – Teleconferencing
– Satellite and Interactive Video-Conferencing
• 5th - Internet/Web
– Computer Networks
• Mainframes
• Computer Based Instructions
– Arrival of the Internet and Web-Based Education
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11. Technologies and Media
• Print
• Audio and Video Media
• Radio and Television
• Teleconferencing
• Computer and Web-based learning
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12. Design and Development of Web-
Based Courses
• Authoring Tool
– Tools for designing instructions
– Example: Flash, Author ware and Director
• Web Documents
– Use of programming languages
– Example: HTML, Java etc
• Integrated Learning Systems
– Blackboard or WebCT
• Web Design Principles
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13. Design and Development of Web-
Based Courses
• Lets view an example
– http://oll.depaul.edu
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14. Bibliography and Reference
• Distance Education – A System View, 2nd
edition by Micheal Moore and Grey
Kearsley
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_education
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