Howard Griffith and Donald Girouard brought the heat on Monday with their presentation on Distance Education. For starters I did not realize how many courses you could take through Distance Education and also the ways you could take the courses.
For students who live in remote communities, especially for students living in northern Manitoba this is away for them to graduate with the courses they want. For a lot of students its hard to imagine not getting into the classes they want especially in a high school setting. For a lot of students this is a reality and it sucks!
I took several Distance Education courses when I got to university through WebCT. They honestly saved my life and also shaved a year off of my university life. There was a couple of Native Studies courses that I wanted to take which unfortunately were not offered through the campus. I got lucky though and they were offered through Distance Education and I loved it. I got to work at my own pace and I didn't have to take the bus in the freezing -40 temperatures to get to school.
The only problem I might see with Distance Education is lack of personal touch. If a student has a question and the Internet down is for whatever reason or the teacher can't be reached by phone it becomes a major headache. Even if you consider this as the major problem of Distance Education its a very minor one. At least the student is having the opportunity to take this class rather driving hours to be in an actual boring classroom.
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you make some great points riley, if there wasnt distance ed courses alot of students would not be able to graduate or take the classes that they wanted too! Personal touch is a big issue when it comes to teaching and learning, i agree with you it can be a headache. again not a huge problem but a problem none the less.
ReplyDeleteDistance education is a definite plus for nothern schools that do not have access to the resources or enough teachers to teach all the courses students are interested in. This gives them the opportunity to be able to learn some new material that may not be taught in the class. At the school I last student taught at one of the students was taking a French class thought distance learning and I thought that was great, French had never been an official course at that school and it was nice to be able to see this student, who would have normally not had the choice to take this course, recieve a credit for it. I had the same thought you did about recieving help, what if the internet were down what would this student do? However, there was a teacher at the school who could speak French, so getting help from another teacher is always an option too.
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