Delivering Instructional Content–at any Distance–is not Teaching

Abstract

For some time, educators and others have taught over long distances. The book provides an example of an excellent long distance tool. New means of conveying information provide further opportunities. But in seizing these opportunities, educators tend to confound two aspects of instruction. They blur the means— radio, video, internet, and other means—through which to provide information with the methods—sequencing, prompting, priming, and other techniques—by which that information has an instructional effect. Contacting a large number of students does not mean instructing that same large number. The telecommunication arrangements of long distance education become increasingly sophisticated, but long distance education efforts still operate within the Lecture Model. The Lecture Model constrains new technologies. It prevents solving the core educational problem: achieving high mastery from all students while dealing with their enormous behavioral variability. The problem of long distance education is the problem of education at any distance. Innovation at the tool level, and even the instructional level is not sufficient. The solution occurs only with innovation at three levels of the educational enterprise: its pedagogical technology, its division of labor, and its organizational structure.