Theories and Paradigms of Distance Education

Distance education is intimately related to interactions (Aderson, 2008). For Anderson (2008) these interactions are between the components of the educational experiences, which are the teacher, learners, content, context and external environments. In addition we need to consider the fact that face-to-face education cannot be transported to an online environment without adjusting many aspects of it to the new learning experience. For Simonson (2008) what distance education must achieve is equivalence with the face-to-face learning expectation.



In order to achieve this Simonson equivalence we need to considerer the value and importance of creating learning communities that effectively support its member’s interactions. Current technologies available through Web 2.0 networks present a huge variety of options to achieve these fundamental necessities in distance education. Learning platforms for content sharing and interactions such as Moodle, multimedia web hosts such as Youtube or communication software such as Skype are just a few of these resources.


References:

Anderson, T. (Ed.). (2008). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zuvacek, S. (2008). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed., chapters 1 and 2).