A Conceptual Framework for Effective Distance Education

Garrison et al.’s Community of Inquiry Framework

Importance of Community

“In Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt noted that “Even in this virtual or electronic community, educators must realize that the way the medium is used depends largely on human…and that these needs are the prime reason that electronic communities are formed.”

They then offered practical suggestions for developing academic communities in online distance classes, including seven basic steps:

(a) clearly define the group’s purpose,
(b) create a distinctive online gathering place,
(c) promote effective leadership from within,
(d) define norms and a code of conduct,
(e) allow for a range of roles,
(f) permit and facilitate subgroups, and
(g) permit students to resolve their own disputes.

They remind the reader that the word community comes from the root communicare (“to share”) and therefore encourages collaborative learning activities to enable students to share common experiences.

G.A. Berg similarly encouraged online instructors to use virtual teams to foster community development in distance courses. “The notion of community associated by pursuits is one that is useful in relationship to education – it leads to rich connections with both constructivist learning theory and lessons learned from teams in business environments.” By developing virtual teams, and providing common projects and interdependent tasks to work on, Berg argues that the pedagogical effectiveness of the distance course will be increased. Such online learning communities provide a framework for social reinforcement and information exchange while girding the learning experience with academic, intellectual, and interpersonal support.”

In 1980, Keegan defined DE in terms of six characteristics. His definition, specifically the last characteristic (e.g. learner as individual), reflects the philosophy underlying the early approach to DE and the early understanding of effective DE. Written materials and technologies were used to transfer information to individual students; Grade A+ communication infrastructures were used to broadcast lectures and educational information via the television and the computer. Online video lectures were used to disseminate information to students. Learner independence and the privatization of learning was emphasized (Keegan, 1980), and interaction among students and faculty was NOT deemed essential.

This traditional DE approach was based upon behavioral theories of learning (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992; Skinner, 1974) with the underlying assumption that objective knowledge should be transmitted to individual students for absorption and recall. The entire learning process was faculty-centered. Effectiveness was determined by the teacher’s ability to communicate information through the selected medium and the student’s ability to recall the information on objective, criterion based tests (Jonassen & Land, 2000). Measures of distance education effectiveness including grades and criterion-based tests were primarily measures of surface learning (i.e. understanding and absorbing existing information; lower levels of thinking).

At the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, researchers and educators recognized that learners were not responding favorably to traditional instructional methods, and the employment of behavioral strategies in the online environment resulted in unsatisfied learners, frustrated faculty, and high attrition rates (Carr, 2000; Conrad, Donaldson, & Knupfer, 2001; Prensky, 2001).

White, Roberts, and Brannan (2003) acknowledged that “unless the [online] course is reconceptualized using an interactive learning pedagogy, the results are nothing more than a correspondence course via e-mail and that simply transferring a traditional classroom-based course to an online format is doomed to failure” (p. 172).

Consequently, the faculty-centered, lecture-based model was exchanged for the student-centered learning model (Dobson & Grosb, 2001; Offir, Lev, & Bezalel, 2008), and a shift from seeing the learner as a passive obtainer of information to an active gatherer and constructor of knowledge was made. Educators adopted distance education teaching strategies based upon the theories of constructivism and social constructivism. For example, technologies, such as discussion forums and blogs, were used to facilitate online discussion and interaction among students and teachers.

Although some researchers still suggest that some students prefer to work individually and that interaction may simply be an aspect of the classroom associated with well-being rather than learning (Garrison & Anderson, 2003; Olofosson & Lindberg, 2006), critical effectiveness research has emerged to demonstrate that internal and socially negotiated dialogue is vital for the advancement of higher order learning, and interaction is essential to the promotion of deep learning (Garrison & Anderson, 2003; Jonassen & Lard, 2000;).

Interaction, sense of community, social presence, critical thinking, and deep learning are constructs that have been identified as crucial measurements of quality and effective online teaching and learning (Garrison & Anderson, 2003; Moore, 1993; Rovai, 2002). Let’s look at several frameworks have been used to study effective distance education.

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