Essay Instructions: You are to write 2-page paper. Read the article below and summarize the article. Do Not Use Outside Sources!
Learner Differences in Distance Learning
One important difference between distance and traditional learners is the fact that distance learners typically learn in more independent environments. As a result the concept of independence has been an important construct in the evolution of distance education theory. To establish a context for this chapter is important to make a distinction between distance learning and distributed learning. The growth in the capacity of telecommunications technologies is blurring the boundaries between distance and traditional instruction. Online and web-based instruction is becoming increasingly common in traditional as well as distant courses. As a result our resident learners are being required to learn in much more independent environments and a half in the past. This is a positive trend if we believe that experience as an independent learner will ultimately foster independent learning. But the history and may pose new challenges in our quest to accommodate the unique needs of each learner individually. So within the context of this chapter distributed learning issues reflect the fact that many of our distance technologies are being applied in traditional resident learning environments. If this is true any discussion of this issue surrounding learners learn at a distance will also inform the wider spectrum of online irrespective of physical distance. Moore and Kearsley 1996 argue that the concept of distance should not refer to physical separation of teachers and learners alone but rather to be pedagogical distance between different understandings and perceptions. Thus, transactional distance refers to a psychological separation or gap in understanding and meaning. But as Moore and Kearsley suggests transactional distance is a factor on the campus or even in a classroom. Certainly physical distance increases the transactional distance a learner experience is because some form of technical media must be used to mediate the communication between teacher and learner. The field of distance education emerged years ago within the context of serving learners who cannot otherwise come to camp is just in time for geographic constraints. But the use of distance technologies in traditional classroom settings is growing at a phenomenal rate. We may have ‘outdistance’ the geographic distance, but we still have much work to do with respect to the transactional distance. So within the context of this chapter, distributive learning is used to reflect the fact that many of our distance technologies are being applied in traditional resident learning environments. However the concept of transactional distance encompasses distributed learning. One striking feature of our schools is the fact that unlike so many other sectors of our society schools have changed very little over the past century. Our aspects of our lives are for a variety and in some cases individuals seem overrun with choice. If Bellamy 2000, who wrote looking backwards, has suddenly emerged from the 19th century into a factory, an office, or a library of today, he would surely feel out of place. However, today's classroom would be quite familiar. While the marketplace is rife with choice, the classroom is still a product of the mass production mentality of the industrial age. That is why the whole the aptitude treatment interaction movement was so exciting in its day with its promise to help us designed instruction that matched the learning needs of individuals, unfortunately, the promise of aptitude treatment interaction has largely been unrealized. Researchers in the field of distance education still believe technology can help educators individualized learning experience. This is evident in the literature and its captivation with the concept of learning styles. Providing teachers and course designers with information that can prove the cognitive efficiency of each learners experience is still clearly and important goal. However this is a goal that still eludes us. This chapter poses the argument that continuing our current approach to research learning differences in distance education will rule unproductive. Following a brief review of the research on learner variables in distance education, the chapter addresses the need for re-conceptualizing our questions about learner differences and uses the argument as a basis for conceptualizing the construct of learning instructor into action. Finally, the chapter concludes that some recommendations for future research.
Learner Variables in Distance Education Research
Many researchers have attempted to identify learner factors that impact learning in distance education settings. Much of this research examines either learner style or learner psychological variables. Some of the studies examined the cognitive style constructs most often the construct of the field dependence/field independence. These studies examined the relationship between learner variables and participation, attitudes, and achievement. This review here narrows the focus to research on learner differences specifically related to achievement. Oxford, Young, Ito, and Sumrall 1993 explored motivation, language learning strategy, and learning style as predictors of language learning achievement of 107 high school students enrolled in the Japanese language class. Findings showed that motivation related to career and academic factors was a moderate predictor of language learning achievements. Learning styles were not predictors of performance although the finding showed a relationship between learning style and motivation. Students with a preference for auditory modalities demonstrated higher levels of motivation than students with preference for visual and kinds that he kinesthetic learning. Dille and Mezack 1991 examined learning styles and locus of control as predictors of success and a course delivered to both college teleport students and on-campus students. The study consisted of 151 students who were enrolled in 4 telecourses. The average age was 27.5. Kolb’s learning style inventory was used to measure cognitive style preference and Rotter’s internal locus of control scale was used to measure the construct locus of control. Students with an internal locus of control received higher letter grades in the course than students with an external locus of control. In addition successful students scored higher than the unsuccessful students on the concrete experience scale of the learning style inventory. However when looking at the abstract conceptualization minus concrete experience the successful students scored higher than the unsuccessful students did. Multiple regression indicated that the only predictor of success was locus of control with the more successful students reporting scores in the ‘internal’ range. Expanding upon the work of Dille and Mezack 1991, Biner, Bink, Huffman, and Dean 1995 use the personality assessment instrument to identify differences in personality factors between students enrolled in interactive television and traditional courses. In addition they sought to determine whether any personality types predicted successful performance in a telecourse. The sample of the study was 164 students in the interactive television treatment and 200 traditional students taking the same course on campus and the broadcast room. They reported that telecourse students differed from their traditional counterparts on four factors: intelligence (abstract thinking); emotional stability; trust; and compulsivity. An analysis of second-order factor scores suggested that telecourse students had higher scores on two factors: dependence and control. Correlations between personality factors and final course grade identifies some differences between telecourse and traditional students. For the traditional student, higher grades were associated with greater emotional stability, seriousness, shyness, imaginativeness, and liberalism. Telecourse students with higher grades showed greater self-sufficiency and less compulsivity. In addition they found a significant relationship between grades and the expedient-conscientious factor. Telecourse students with higher grade scored higher on the expedients to mention while traditional students scored higher on the conscientious dimension. While it is important to note that the telecourse population differed in terms of age and gender telecourse students were more likely to be older and female, analyses using age and gender as independent variables did not yield effects for the variables. The relationship between telecourse persistent and psychological variables was examined by Pugliese 1994. The constructs studied were loneliness, communication apprehension, communication competence, and locus of control. A researcher used a telephone survey with 306 students participating. The sample included both traditional and nontraditional students. None of the factors predicted persistence. Using Canfield’s learning style inventory, Coggins 1988 surveyed a sample of 164 students all 26 years of age or older enrolled in a correspondence base external degree program. She found that positive expectancy of performance confidence favorably affects the completion rate of students enrolled in correspondence study. However the conditions of learning and preferred learning modality appear to have no impact upon completion. While not statistically significant non-completers showed a higher preference for peer and instructor affiliation than did completers.
Conceptualizing the Problem
Clearly, it is difficult to draw any conclusion from this line of research. While the research provide some evidence that learner differences should be considered clearly our best guidance teachers is to tell them to use a variety of strategies and media so that surely we can effectively teach most of the people some of the time. Perhaps our assumptions about learner differences are wrong. What if there is no such thing as learning type for style? Or if such a construct does exist what if it has nothing to do with helping individuals learn? Learning styles actually mean many different things depending upon the instrument used. Sometimes learners cells are viewed as preferences as many of the instruments used measure learners preference including modality preferences. Most of these studies fail to show a relationship between the learner's preference, instructional treatment, and performance, and there is little, if any, evidence that supports the assumption that learner preferences impact learning. In fact, some research suggests that when given the opportunity to do what they prefer learners may not make the best choices. Belland, Taylor, Canelos, Dwyer, and Baker 1985 found that first-year college students who chose the face of learning using computer-assisted instruction did not perform as well on both amount learned and performance competency as subjects whose case was controlled externally. In addition to high achievers opted for more feedback than the lower achievers. Using a sample of 65 sixth-grade students enrolled at a private school, Carrier, Davison, and Williams 1985 found that high ability students selected more elaboration options then didn't know what ability students. These researchers suggest that the assumption that allowing students to exercise their own judgment will improve performance may be faulty. Second, finding reliable and valid measures of types such as the popular learning style constructs has been difficult despite sustained efforts by researchers. Three commonly used instruments in distance education research are the Myers-Briggs type indicator, the Canfield learning style inventory, and Kolb’s learning style inventory. The MBTI is based upon Jungian theory and assesses perception and judgment. The Canfield learning style inventory examines academic, structural, and achievement conditions, expectancy of performance, and mode of learning. Finally based upon experiential learning theory, the Kolb learning style inventory examines concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Analyses of the validity and reliability of these issuance is far from conclusive. The nature of populations used to establish the norms is one concern. The subjects used were selected from populations that were above average in terms of intellectual ability, educational level, and income levels. A second concern is that all the instruments use nominal rather than interval data. Analyses suggests that the factors examined are not dichotomous as presumed but rather interval. In addition of some of the instruments use ipsative scores. An ipsative score is one that varies based upon an individual's response on the other elements of the instrument. Therefore an individual score on one element is depended upon his or her responses to the others. Individual scores cannot be compared to others because they may differ in terms of degree. In addition the interdependent nature of the data provided by these instruments made be unsuited to measure of reliability use. Likewise with the exception of the MBTI the studies that have been conducted to establish reliability and validity are inconclusive. Finally little evidence exists to suggest that these instruments predict achievement or achievement-related behaviors such as effort. While the MBTI may be an effective instrument of assessing personality characteristics little evidence exists to support its ability to help us predict how learners will perform under given conditions. At issue it is the fact that learner styles, cognitive styles such as field dependent/field independence, and personality constructs are described in the literature as relatively constant, that is, these are factors in us that are not subject to change. Therefore the only way to approach the design of instruction when trying to accommodate learner differences is to change the instrument rather than to change that learner. But the most important goal of all education including distance education is to help them learn how to learn in a variety of situations and under a variety of conditions because that is the nature of the learning society in which we live. Our most important task as educators is indeed to help learners build a repertoire of approaches to learning so that they can learn to learn under variety of circumstances that life will surely bring. This goals is frantically critical in an environment of rapid technological change. If we focus on how we can modify the instruction to accommodate the individual are we not preparing to ended rather than independent learners. If we focus, instead, upon how learners approach of particular learning situation we can help them learn to modify their approaches to accommodate a variety of learning situations. Studies by Gibson 1996 support his conclusion by offering evidence that learners do in fact change their view of learning overtime in ways that impact how will they learn even throughout the experience of a single course. A more powerful and expedient method of addressing individual learner needs me be to identify effective approaches to learning and then help students acquire the meta-cognitive skills needed to adopt those approaches in settings where there had been found to lead us to success. Perhaps we should turn our attention from what learners are and instead focus on what learners do. A more productive line of inquiry then focuses upon how learners approach learning rather than upon learning styles or psychological traits. The construct approaches of learning refer to the characteristics that learners bring to achievement settings. Unlike traits, they can vary from setting to setting, and they defined the stance learners take toward learning in particular settings. For the purpose of this analysis approaches to learning include the goals, self- efficacy, and strategy used that student's report in different achievement settings. There are two main reasons for choosing this line of inquiry. First, there is a large body of empirical research showing that differences in approaches to learning are powerful predictors of both effort and achievement. So while there has been a scant evidence for the importance of learning styles there is an abundance of evidence supporting the importance of approaches. Second, and perhaps more important it is the ethics of continuing to focus upon how to modify instruction to accommodate learning purposes when we suspect that learners will be bettors are in the long run by instructing that encourages them to be more flexible in their approaches across the variety of learning settings they are sure to face. Instruction could then focus upon fostering goals and enhancing self-efficacy as well as upon teaching students what strategies will help them across different achievement settings.
The Approaches to Learning Constructs
Approaches to learning is operationalized in terms of achievement goals, self-efficacy, and reported strategy use following what has been a fruitful trend in motivational research since the mid-1980s. Each of these constructs is described below. First, achievement goals are the reasons students report for trying to learn individual achievement setting. There is considerable research that supports the importance of the distinction between lowering goals also call mastery or task-oriented goals and performance goals. Learning goals are goals that are related to the desire to increase one's understanding or skill level. In contrast performance goals are also called ego-oriented goals are related to the desire to perform better than others and protect one's ego. This research has constantly found a positive relationship between learning goals and self-regulation, strategy use, an effort, and has sometimes found a negative relationship between performance goals and productive achievement behaviors. Additionally, there is evidence that future polls show several positive relationships productive achievement behaviors and do learning goals. Future polls referred to distance goal e.g. eligibility for extra curriculum activities, college admission, and career opportunities that to some extent are contingent on current test performance but not inherent in the performance itself. Self-efficacy refers to the confidence learners have in their ability to successfully perform the achievement test currently confronting them. According to self-efficacy theory, when we doubt our ability to respond effectively in a given situation we often try to avoid the situation or diminish its importance to us. Task that we believe to be within our range of competence i.e. our self-efficacy is high are more likely to be approached eagerly and with considerable effort than our task that we believe are outside our range of competence i.e. our self-efficacy is low. However our efforts are learned in a particular situation are partially determined by our confidence in our abilities to successfully perform a project with fans. There is a great deal of correlation research that supports these theoretical assumptions. Importantly this research strongly supports the domain specific nature of self-efficacy. In other words, self-efficacy is not the same as global self-esteem nor is it a type that remains constant across achievement settings involving different content. However it has been found to function nearly identically to expectancy motivation as examined by Coggins. While achievement goal and self-efficacy are the abstract manifestations of approaches strategy use is the concrete manifestation in that strategies aren't the behaviors a learner employees during the learning process. In fact strategy use is generally depicted in motivation research as influenced by goals and self-efficacy. Researchers often evaluate strategies based on a distinction between deep and shallow processing. The strategies involve processing new information in terms of how it relates to the existing knowledge. The to be learned information is elaborated on an integrated with knowledge already residing in memory. Shallow strategies involve processing new information separate from existing knowledge and in the form in which it was originally encountered. The strategy of rote memorization along with other types of superficial engagement with new information e.g. simply reading a chapter twice captures the notion of shallow processing. There is evidence that deep strategy use is important for learning and achievement. There is also some evidence that shallow processing strategies may hinder learning. This construct has been studied in distance education literature, for example, Kember and Harper 1987 found a relationship between surface approach to study and non-persisters in a correspondence study program. However some research suggests that the two types of strategies are often related to one another and what is shallow in one achievement setting might be deep in another. For instance, Jouhlin, Lai, and Cottman 1992 examined the constructs of deep and surface learning with a sample of 1843 distance students. In contrast to expectations they found that the item related to memorize and loaded the deep approach and the item related questioning loaded with the surface approach. They, too suggested that the teaching context might impact which approaches to learning are successful. A series of studies is currently examining the constructs of self-efficacy, motivation, study strategies in a chemical engineering course that use primarily CD-ROM and web-based strategies. Successful and less successful students were compared using and approaches to study instrument designed to assess motivation, goals, and strategies. Students with the final grade of B or better were classified as successful; students with the final grade of D or F were classified as unsuccessful. The findings from the first phase of the study were somewhat surprising because the successful and less successful student showed little difference in the level of motivation, effort, and goal orientation. To learn more about the factors contributing to success, selected students from two groups were interviewed by Greene, Dillon, and Crynes, 2001. Analysis of the interviews identified some important differences between the successful and less successful students. The last successful students focus upon memorizing and applying what they had memorize. The successful student focused on understanding the concepts. The less successful students get the easier part of the work and in doing so may have failed to take advantage of the opportunity to activate prior learning. While the successful students reported skimming the easier parts they were also looking for areas what they fail to understand. The successful student talked about how they learned in the last successful student did not. Both groups use surface strategies but the successful students also use the deep strategies and appeared to be aware of the difference between these approaches. They seem to be able to use his surrenders to make decisions about how approach learning where is the last successful students continue to rely upon strategies that were not working. Perhaps there is some value in knowing that learners is a visual learner or has a high internal locus of control. Perhaps there is also some danger in this approach as well. For while it might be of benefit to understand that a learner is a field dependent learner, it may impact the teachers or that learners confidence in his or her ability to learn the material, particularly if those involved no with a research suggests that field dependent learners do not perform as well as the field independent learners. With literature supporting a relationship between positive self-efficacy and performance, ‘typing’ a learner may indeed be self-defeating. Likewise there may be some strategy teachers can use to help field dependent learners improve their performance but since this construct is a trait those strategies may not be robust to changing conditions. However teachers can certainly help learners change their approach to study.
Learners and Differences and Learner-Instructor Interaction
Improving our understanding of how learners approach their study may improve our understanding of the construct of learning-instructor interaction. Those of us in distance education often talk about the importance of interaction in distance education Moore 1989 has defined three types of interaction: learner-learner, learner-instructor, and learner-content and argues that learner-instructor interaction is a crucial component that facilitates the other two and creates an effect of learning environment. While true, it seems equally true that learner-instructor interaction can also interfere with learning. Online communication can be easily misinterpret due to the lack of visual and facial cues. Online teachers are encouraged to provide timely and detailed feedback. However online teachers often do not have any information about how the student responds to this feedback. In fact student may interpret a high level of feedback as negative feedback when in reality a teacher is merely posing questions to stimulate student thinking. So obviously learner-instructor interaction is more than just something that should be present, it is something that should be correct arise in the terms of its quality. Independent learners exercise great autumn nominee in their learning decisions and dependent learners. This is a positive feature of independent learning environments only if the learners have the ability to make effect of learning decisions. Using Moore’s theory of transactional distance we might hypothesize that learners who have not learned to make effect of decisions about their approaches to learning will benefit from more structured and more dialogue. Likewise learners who are autonomous learners will require less structure and less dialogue. Some form of learner-instructor interaction is required to assess which learners will thrive in an independent environment and which will struggle. What constitutes effective learner-instructor interaction? Perhaps it focus on student approaches to learning can help us develop the construct of learner-instructor interaction by providing a basis for making judgments about the appropriate relationship between structure and die lawfully given learner. While technology provide us with the ability to tailor our enter actions in many forms be independent environment prevents us from receiving the immediate feedback we can readily see in the classroom. Our students nodding their heads... or are they nodding to sleep? Do the students seem confused or do they show nods of understanding? Right now our technologies do not communicate these nuances to us. We have to make judgments about these using other means. Perhaps greater understanding about each learners approach to learning will help us improve our enter actions with him or her. All too often students use approaches that have been successful in the past even though the problem has changed. Should he teachers and that this is a style issue and therefore modify the instruction? Or should the teacher recognize that this is a surface approach to learning and help the student change his or her behavior? While a teacher might give good detailed feedback on the specific problem, that teacher may have served the student better by providing feedback that can be generalized to other very different settings. Our learner-instructor interaction should include strategies that will help students engage in meta-cognitive processing. Teachers should provide learners with prompts to help them reflect upon what they understand and what they do not understand, what part of the problems easy and what is hard. In other words, effective learner-instructor interaction should be designed not only to help learners understand the content, but also to help them understand themselves as learners.
Future Research
Not every learner will succeed in every learning setting. However many learners have the potential to succeed but lacked skills and understanding about how they approached learning. There are skills that can be learned. Future research should just these ideas. First we should turn our focus from learner traits to learner approaches and develop instruments that we can use to help us learn more about the relationship between approaches to study and performance. Second we should place more emphasis upon research that examines within group differences than between group differences. In other words we should turn our focus on how learners in distributed settings differ in how these differences relate to the performance rather than continuing to compare the effectiveness of distributed versus traditional learning. Finally we should implement different instructional treatments within a district setting to see if we can indeed narrow the gap between the successful and less successful learners. The growth largely of learning throughout higher education will continue to place a more responsibility for learning upon the learner. However we may find it more difficult to diagnose learning needs as learners work and more independent learning environments. Garrison and Baynton 1987, independent learning is not desirable with learners like the support they need to succeed. We must strive to ensure that all learners who have the potential to be successful are ultimately successful. When designing distributed learning environments we must focus on strategies that help students learn how to learn, whether our learners are learning at a distance for learning in a more independent learning on campus. Bellamy may no longer recognize the classroom edged your vision technologies continue to pervade our schools. The recognition that learners have different needs was indeed a revolutionary theory, one that promise to move us from mass education to individualized learning. However, the step from recognition to reality has proven formidable. Rather than focusing upon how to modify the instruction to accommodate the preferences of the learners we should instead focus upon modifying the learning approaches to meet the demands of the instruction.
