Which type of DL method do you prefer?

Hello!

I know that distance learning courses come in different types of formats - correspondence courses, online courses, telecourses, video taped lectures, and two way interactive video. But which of these delivery methods is most favorable? I would really like to hear any opinions and/or experiences from anyone.

Thank you,

Kathleen

 

What a wonderful question! I would have to say correspondence, perhaps supplemented with other media.


Peace,

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Tom Head
www.tomhead.net

 

Even though Im new to this, I would have to vote correspondence. I think web based is the wave of the future but for now Im more comfortable with the written materials in front of me.

 

I've tried correspondence and asynchronous on-line coures. I prefer the latter because getting help is easy and fast. I find great benefit in interacting with the other students in the course. The course materials are more readily adjusted to meet the needs of the class.

Lowell

 

I have taken courses in all the formats you mentioned. I prefer online asynchronus courses, because feedback is easily available, the content of the course is dinamically reinforced using resources in the web, and you can even have some interaction with your co-students, yet you can adjust your study times to your own requirements. I find video tape taped lectures to be boring, but every now and then you'll find a course on video tape that is awesome, like the ones offered by the University of Alabama. Correspondence courses are OK, but if you are a total stranger to the subject, it can be very difficult. The feedback is slow and there is little -if any- interaction with your pals. However, if you are a self directed person, do not care about the lack of feedback or can find it anywhere else, correspondence course are the greatest thing because you can dedicate as much time as the subject requires; I mean, if you find a particular subject interesting, you can easily research more without affecting the schedule, as it is usually very flexible for correspondence courses.

As per two way video link, and in general any form of synchronous method, I think it is very confortable as the format is similar to the classic scholar experience, but the very fact that it's synchronous makes it less flexible.

Regards,
Aaron

 

This may not be directly responsive to your question, but I suggest looking for DL programs that offer some element of face-to-face interaction through residencies or periodic meetings. It may not be affordable or otherwise feasible in many instances, but when available I think it can make a big difference in terms of how connected you feel to your program and the instructors and fellow students. (I'd be curious to know whether there's a correlation with %s of students who finish a course or degree program.)

 

Hi Kathleen. In my case I think that it would depend on what kind of course it was.

Most of my distance-ed experience was with correspondence. I think that it worked very well for an independent-study reading-and-essay type class. I'm resolutely low-tech, and I like to get physical papers back with handwritten remarks on them.

But I really missed the classroom discussion and the slightly electric feeling of reading recent papers or pre-prints, and discussing them real-time in seminars. There is a community feeling in a good program as well, that is hard to replicate by correspondence. Part of education's function is socialization into a community of professionals or scholars.

So there would have to be more interactivity in my ideal program. My preference would be asynchronous written discussion boards. That would allow me to fit it around my schedule (or moods) and would accomodate people in widely separate time zones. As I've argued before, I think that this kind of format actually has advantages over live classroom interaction in that it would allow me to think about my contributions and compose a response rather than always talking off the top of my head.

In other cases, I think that a synchronous real-time approach might be better. A foreign language class obviously. You would need streaming audio for the spoken part, and you would need immediate feedback from the instructor on your grammar and pronunciation. I think that mathematics may benefit from a real-time approach as well.

Bottom line: I think that the choice of "best" medium depends on the demands of the particular course. We still have not even hit hands-on labs, which will probably remain impossible for distance education (except at supervised remote sites) until full-immersion virtual reality is perfected. Tele-presence.