Distributed Learning (2006-06-20)

Distributed Learning, Distributed Education and Distributed Learning Environment appear to me to be about decentralising education and making more resources available in different medias so students can choose what suits them and access it at any time and at their own pace.

Web based resources - blogs, wikis, IM, newsgroups etc are ripe for use to provide potentially rich educational resources.

The DLE thing appears to me to be a collision between Vygotsky's ZPD and Gardner's multiple inteligences made possible by the net: By using colaborative tools students, tutors, mentors, experts and teachers are brought together enhancing the size of the 'zone' and the options for scaffolding. By using multimedia, content is made accessable to more of the intelligences. By using blogs and im learners interact and the social side of knowledge construction could be enhanced, along with the ownership of the process by the learners.

Concerns/potential criticisms:
Hopefully DLE is about widening the choices and styles available to students and not about saving dollars by not having to build physical educational facilities or employ more tutors. Clearly technology has made a lot of industries cheaper to run - online banking, call centres, just in time delivery, automatic warehousing - these all use distributed resources to save infrastructure and employment costs. The application of automation to the provision of student resources could be seen to be able to provide more value with less resources - a possibility that might dilute the ultimate quality of learning outcomes if it is taken to its extreme.


Sources:
http://techcollab.csumb.edu/techsheet2.1/distributed.html
http://erd.disted.camosun.bc.ca/de/