Distance Learning – Considerations for Course Design in Extension Tamara Meredith 9/15/2015

Main Discussion Points  Adult learners and learning theory  Delivery – synchronous, asynchronous, blended  Micro-lessons vs. longer reflective assignments  Transactional Distance  Use of Multimedia and Cognitive Load Theory

Adults and Distance Ed Learning  Minimum “instruction” and more hands-on exploration  Bite-sized lessons for daily life (in the car, at soccer practice, etc.)  Fast and efficient support/response if issues arise  Facilitate learner involvement in determining course topics, outcomes, and/or evaluations if possible

Types of Content Delivery Synchronous  Face-to-face in one location  F2F in classroom PLUS others attending via web conference  Web conference/streaming video Asynchronous  Online only, work at your own pace  Online only, deadlines and threaded discussions  Watch recorded videos of F2F class Blended  F2F plus online discussions and work  Web conferences plus online discussions and work

Course and Lesson Length  “Before smartphones, we went online roughly five times a day, in long chunks, according to Joe Kraus, a partner at Google Ventures. Today, with smartphones, it’s 27 times, in much shorter bursts.”  “Today’s online courses basically consist of reading assignments, lecture videos, homework problems and quizzes. They might be broken up into short lessons, but they still follow the same old linear, 14- to 20-week long structure of a semester.” Thoughts on time… In short sessions/lessons, especially synchronous meetings, learners are usually best able to practice and show “ lower order thinking skills ” – remembering, understanding, retelling (from previous readings), selecting, applying, demonstrating, etc. Over longer periods of time, especially during asynchronous coursework, students are able to use “ higher order thinking skills ” – analysis, evaluating, creating, designing, reflecting, etc. The most successful online courses take these into consideration as part of the course’s design. bored-and-dropping-out/

Transactional Distance  According to Moore (1980), transactional distance is “a psychological and communication space to be crossed, a space of potential misunderstanding between the inputs of instructor and those of the learner”. If learning outcomes in any distance education course are to be maximized, transactional distance needs to be minimized or shortened.  There are three key interactive components that have to work together to shorten the transactional distance and provide for a meaningful learning experience:  dialogue, or interaction between learners and teachers  structure of the instructional programs  autonomy, or the degree of self-directedness of the learner. Borrowed straight from Wikipedia! These two you can control – the third, you cannot…

Multimedia and Cognitive Load Theory  Each learner has a unique and fixed amount of working memory to process information before it can be stored in long-term memory.  The challenge is to increase the Germane as much as possible while decreasing the Extraneous.  The Intrinsic load cannot be changed.

Recommendations for Using Media design-for-the-brain-multimedia-principles reduce-cognitive-load-in-elearning  How to reduce cognitive load?  Dual channel – give some info aurally, some visually  Smaller/shorter segments  Get rid of non-essentials  Words go next to graphics  Don’t narrate on-screen text verbatim