• A Vision
• The Design of EDIT 611
• Insights: More Students Found a Voice
• Insights: More Powerful Learning
• Insights: Complex Optimization
• Analysis of the Discussion Forum
• Evolution of Distributed Learning
• References
• Printable Text of Article

© Copyright 1998-99 by Chris Dede (cdede@gmu.edu) and Audrey L. Kremer (kremer@mitretek.org) .  The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author.

Section One:
A Vision: Emerging Interactive Media and Distributed Learning

The development of the Internet is fostering the development and proliferation of new interactive media, such as the WorldWide Web and shared virtual environments. A medium is in part a channel for conveying content; as the Internet increasingly pervades society, educators can readily reach extensive, remote resources and audiences on-demand, just-in-time. Just as important, however, a medium is a representational container enabling new types of messages (e.g., sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words).

Since expression and communication are based on representations such as language and imagery, the process of learning is enhanced by broadening the types of instructional messages students and teachers can exchange. New forms of representation (e.g., interactive models that utilize visualization and other means of making abstractions tangible and sensory) make possible a broader, more powerful repertoire of pedagogical strategies. Also, these emerging interactive media empower novel types of learning experiences; for example, interpersonal interactions across networks can lead to the formation of virtual communities [Dede, 1996]. The innovative kinds of pedagogy enabled by these novel media make possible evolving university instruction beyond synchronous, group, presentation-centered forms of education. beyond conventional "teaching-by-telling" and "learning-by-listening."

In Chris’s Spring, 1998 EDIT 611 course (Distance Learning via Networks and Telecommunications), he and the students explored a number of emerging interactive media for communication across barriers of distance and time. The conceptual framework underlying the course is "distributed learning": educational activities orchestrated across classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings and based on a mixture of presentational and "constructivist" (guided inquiry activities, collaborative learning, mentoring) pedagogies. Recent advances in "groupware" and experiential simulation enable guided, collaborative inquiry-based learning even though students are in different locations and often are not online at the same time. With the aid of mentors, students can create, share, and master knowledge about authentic real-world problems. Through a mixture of instructional media, learners and educators can engage in synchronous or asynchronous interaction: face-to-face or in disembodied fashion or as an "avatar" expressing an alternate form of individual identity.

Distributed learning demonstrates to students that education is integral to all aspects of life—not just schooling—and that many information tools scattered throughout our workplace can be used for learning across distance. Such an instructional approach also can build partnerships for learning among stakeholders in education (e.g., teachers and families, colleges and employers). In the long run, distributed learning can potentially conserve scarce financial resources by maximizing the educational usage of information devices (televisions, computers, telephones, videogames) in homes and workplaces. In addition, distributed learning enables shifts in the pattern of universities’ investments. Less money is needed for physical infrastructure—buildings, parking lots—and more resources can go into ways of creating a virtual community for creating, sharing, and mastering knowledge.

The goals of Chris’s EDIT 611 course are (1) to give participants hands-on experiences with the range of interactive media now readily available for distributed learning; (2) to develop an understanding of how each medium shapes the cognitive, affective, and social interactions of learners; and 3) to model and discuss effective instructional design in the use of each interactive medium. The creation, sharing, and mastery of knowledge is not simply an intellectual exercise; the emotional and psychosocial dimensions of learning are very important as well. These interactive media enable an extraordinary range of cognitive, affective, and social "affordances" (enhancements of human capabilities) of great power for distributed learning—while at the same time also potentially limiting expression and communication.

Much study is needed to develop the new kinds of rhetoric necessary to make these emerging media effective for learning, as well as to design distributed learning environments appropriate to specific groups of learners, for particular types of content and a given set of educational goals. While a great deal is known about instructional design in classroom settings to facilitate affective and social interactions, many emerging media are so new that little is understood about the emotional and collaborative affordances they provide—and lack. The EDIT 611 course provides a testbed for informal study of the potential and limits of emerging interactive media.

Next Section: The Design of EDIT 611