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Media and adult learning: Aforum: U.S. higher educationand international distancelearningDaniel Granger aa Director of the Center for Distance Learning ,SUNY Empire State College , Saratoga Springs, NewYork, 12866Published online: 24 Sep 2009.

To cite this article: Daniel Granger (1988) Media and adult learning: A forum: U.S.higher education and international distance learning, American Journal of DistanceEducation, 2:3, 80-88, DOI: 10.1080/08923648809526639

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATIONVol. 2 No. 3 1988

MEDIA AND ADULT LEARNING:A FORUM

U.S. Higher Education andInternational Distance Learning

Daniel Granger

The apparent conflict between two of the secretaries of education in theReagan administration, Terrell Bell and William Bennett, indicates a dilem-ma in American higher education which can trace its roots at least backto the Sputnik era when U.S. educators urgently felt the need to be globallycompetitive. Both secretaries seem genuinely concerned about the impor-tance of higher education to American culture and national vigor, and bothfeel that current activities are inadequate. Secretary Bennett underscoreshis criticism of higher education by complaining that it costs too much.Secretary Bell, for his part, insists that the United States must increaseand improve access to education for its citizens in order "to secure theblessings of liberty." Parents of college-age students must agree with Dr.Bennett, while most educated Americans recognize the urgent importanceof Dr. Bell's plea.

The Bell-Bennett debate, or any other polarizing snapshot of higher educa-tion, projects a tension between pressing need and limited resources. Thefour-year uninterrupted undergraduate career is fast becoming a luxury ofthe minority. Almost half of all undergraduate students are over twenty-five, enrolled only part time, nonresidential, and holding jobs. Nationalleaders are confounded by their need to be seen as both supportive of educa-tion and fiscally responsible. In the absence of clear new directions fromeducators, some legislators have begun to question their once unqualifiedsupport for higher education (Wilson 1988).

Students intent on higher education will go to considerable lengths toget that education — witness the burgeoning of "innovative" programswhich make some allowances for nontraditional students (for instance, inscheduling, requirements, or program design). Nevertheless, the problemof declining resources seems to have stymied U.S. educators, who haveyet to propose or develop firm and clear alternative approaches. The four-year residential program continues to be the standard, and other options,such as those offered by adult or continuing education programs, must con-

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tinually defend their integrity and respectability, while usually paying theirown way.

Internationally, the need for higher education has been no different.However, traditional institutional resources for higher education have beenmuch more limited. Consequently, economic necessity virtually requiredalternative pedagogical models. As a result of social as well as economicpressures, new forms of education, under the general rubric of "distanceeducation," have been developed that are free of the capital-intensiveoverhead of traditional campus programs. These models use new pedagogiesand technologies to provide educational programs often comparable to orsuperior to traditional classroom instruction. In the United Kingdom,Canada, Spain, Australia, Japan, Germany, as well as many other coun-tries in South America, Africa, and Asia, educational programs and in-stitutions have been established which offer a strong blend of effectivenessand efficiency.

There are several general models of distance programs, making moreor less use of existing resources, and they virtually all share pedagogicalgoals familiar to U.S. educators through adult education and the broadermovements for reform of recent years. Probably the best known distancelearning institution is the Open University (OU) of Britain, enrolling closeto 100,000 students a year (and still with a one- or two-year waiting list).The brainchild of the Labour Party in the 1960s, the Open University isnow fully supported by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governmentbecause of its effectiveness.

The Open University is by no means a shoestring operation, however.Individual courses may cost a million pounds or more to develop, draw-ing on the best talent available. Its founders recognized that the OU's sur-vival depended on its ability to become and be seen as a first-rank univer-sity. Consequently, no expense was spared either in the development orthe production of the course material. Printed materials are attractive andwell designed. Even special studios of the BBC were established at OUheadquarters to prepare electronic course components.

Program delivery is also thorough at the Open University, with thirteenfully staffed regional centers, many more community study centers, andready availability of course tutors, either for individual or group contact.Summer school sessions also bring students together from around the countryonce a year.

The Open University is considered by some other distance learning in-stitutions as the most affluent, perhaps lavish, model of distance educa-tion. At the same time, these critics readily admit that this has been necessaryto establish the credibility and respectability of distance education global-ly, and most programs now trade on the recognition gained by the OU.

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Some national programs are virtually clones of the OU, and OU courseshave been used or adapted by a number of institutions. Still, the annualcost per student is only 50 percent to 60 percent of the cost at a conven-tional university (Commonwealth Secretariat 1987, 50).

Other models of distance learning programs differ more or less fromthe OU model primarily in terms of their access to academic resources:i.e., the faculty responsible for developing courses, the technical level oftheir instructional materials production, and the technologies and methodsused for the delivery of those courses. Depending on regional need andresources available, distance education may be established in an indepen-dent institution "dedicated" to distance learning like the OU; it may bebased within a conventional institution; or it may build on the resourcesof a number of institutions, such as the Open Learning Institute in BritishColumbia which has no faculty of its own.

Those programs based in or drawing on the resources of conventionaluniversities demonstrate models of the potential integration of conventionaleducation with distance education. They offer both classroom and distancelearning through much the same academic and institutional resources toserve students in the way most appropriate to their needs. This "dual mode"is common in Australia, where, as the former head of Deakin Universityput it, it was "a brute necessity" (Jevons 1986, 1). As in the Canadianprovinces, Australian universities have a mandate to serve a student bodyspread over a large area, unable to come together easily for education.

In these dual-mode settings, the transfer from the classroom teachingmode to the distance learning mode has often resulted in a recognition thatmaterials developed for the distance mode could be used to good effectin the classroom. At Deakin, this was recognized and encouraged in thelate 1970s (Jevons 1986, 1). In fact, there seems to be generally, amongstudents and even faculty, a voluntary move toward these materials fortheir instructional utility. While one rarely finds reference to this in print,this author has been told by a director of a distance education programin Nigeria that residential students attending classes will seek out the distancelearning materials for their courses, presumably because of the superiorpresentation. Similarly, in England, faculty in conventional universitieswill use the Open University course materials for ideas on classroompresentation.

This migration toward materials and a model almost alien to the classroominstructional format at first seems curious, if not contrary and subversive.Is distance education simply a large-scale, institutionalized set of studynotes?

An examination of the literature and theory of distance education sug-gests the answer is a resounding "no ." An educational system developed

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to benefit from the economies of scale has also realized effective pedagogicalinnovations — many of which are now called for by progressive U.S.educators. For example, the concerns about active involvement in the learn-ing process and attention to the needs and interests of individual studentshave been addressed in distance learning programs from their inception.The recommendations of such educators as Alexander Astin, ArthurChickering, Zelda Gamson, and Ernest Boyer are often realized in distanceprograms, and the theoretical concerns of distance educators align veryclosely with those of many educators, especially adult educators, in theUnited States. What this similarity suggests is that, with a better understand-ing of a fully developed alternative educational system, American educatorscan be more intentional and deliberate about fostering the emergence ofone or more new possibilities to serve American students more effectivelyand economically.

Among current concerns of distance educators can be found not onlya general interest in increasing students' active involvement in education,but also specific interest in establishing clear linkages between students'learning and their context, including their cultural context. Equally im-portant is the attention paid to responding to the needs and interests ofindividual students, with the goal of building and supporting independencein learning.

Distance learning, of course, by definition requires some separation be-tween the student and the sponsoring institution. Consequently, mostdistance learning programs go to great lengths to establish the "idea ofthe university" firmly in the students' consciousness, through an inter-connected web of print material, interactive study guides, mediated com-ponents, and various kinds of linkages between and among students andfaculty. These can involve actual group meetings, phone calls orteleconferences, interactive video conferences, and even asynchronous com-puter conferences. A critical difference, then, between these linkages andtraditional classrooms is the necessary active participation of the studentin the learning process.

Alexander Astin, one of the co-authors of Involvement in Learning aswell as one of the prime movers behind the current' 'value added'' move-ment, explained in his book, Achieving Educational Excellence, that "in-volvement refers to the investment of physical and psychological energyin various 'objects'... either highly generalized (the student experience)or highly specific (preparing for a chemistry examination)" (Astin 1985,134). Distance education requires that investment, at least at a surface level.Distance educators seek to refine that engagement of the student in learn-ing still further, through the notion of an ongoing dynamic interchangebetween the student and tutor.

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This interchange between student and course tutor has been called various-ly an "academic exchange" and an "academic dialogue." The distanceresearcher Bone Holmberg has refined and developed hypotheses aboutwhat he calls the "guided didactic conversation," intended to establishand maintain a personal rapport about the course content between studentand tutor. Some of its characteristics are:

• readily accessible presentations of subject matter,• explicit supportive advice and suggestions about what to do and avoid,• open invitation to an exchange of views and questions, and• attempts to involve student emotionally by reference to and inclusion

of applications linked to the student's own context.Pedagogically, Holmberg hypothesizes that a successful guided didac-

tic conversation will build the student's confidence in the supportingorganization and its intention to make the subject matter personally rele-vant to him or her, resulting in stronger motivation on the part of the stu-dent and more effective learning (Holmberg 1986B, 11-12).

All students, of course, come to education from a range of backgroundsand contexts, and the current interest in "learning communities" representsan effort to shape a context supportive of and conducive to learning. Bothtraditional and distance educators have recognized that the context for thatlearning, to be fully effective, must extend out to the realm of practicalexperience with which the student is familiar. Not only will this reinforcethe learning process through application — problem solving, simulations,apprenticeships, or actual "real world" operation — but also the contextconnection can provide bridges from old learning to new and can be usedas learning resources for fellow students and even faculty (Holmberg 1986A,30; Jarvis 1987, 156; Checkering 1987, 5; Wright 1987, 3; Rebel, 1987p.22).

This context connection needn't be limited to "relevant" studies, butcan be used to make various studies relevant. William Bennett and E.D.Hirsch, among others, are very concerned about our common culturalheritage. In Challenges to the Humanities, Finn, Ravitch, and Robertswrote:

One way of defining [the humanities] is by listing the subjects that theyhave traditionally included: history, literature, philosophy, and so on.These disciplines should be seen, we believe, not as airtight boxes intowhich subject matter is locked, but as different ways of fathoming thecomplex whole of human experience. To study them is to learn the storyof human struggles to survive, to dominate others, to live together, andto reflect on life; the humanities, collectively, represent the efforts thatpeople have made to understand and interpret their experience. (11)

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In his afterword, Bennett himself goes on to make that context connec-tion explicit in one respect: "An argument for the humanities is an argu-ment neither against practicality nor against 'practical' education. Educa-tion ought not to be severed from matters of job, training, and career"(Finn, Ravitch, and Roberts, 204). From quite a different perspective,Parker Palmer underscores the same connection when he insists that' 'Weneed a way of thinking about community in higher education that relatesit to the central mission of the academy — the generation and transmis-sion of knowledge.'' For Palmer, community is ' 'a capacity for relatednesswithin individuals — relatedness not only to people but to events in history,to nature, to the world of ideas, and yes, to things of the spirit." (Palmer1987, 20, 24)

Distance educators have recognized the pedagogical value of expandingexperiential linkages with learning from immediate activities to their largercontext of application ("the complex whole of human experience") evento providing a historical or social perspective for the work that studentsundertake every day (Granger, 1986; Delling 1987; Rebel 1987). This iscertainly one approach to achieving what Allan Bloom calls a "unifiedview of nature and man's place in it" (Bloom 1987, 147).

The focus on these contextual connections requires a fairly close atten-tion to the needs and interests of the individual student, achieved in dif-ferent ways. The Open University, for instance, requires students to begintheir studies with a foundation course taught by a tutor/counselor. Duringthe course this tutor/counselor becomes familiar with each student'sstrengths, weaknesses, and interests, then remains that student's counselorthroughout his or her OU career. At Empire State College's Center forDistance Learning, each student has a mentor, who works with that stu-dent through a complex educational planning process, establishing a closefamiliarity with the individual's learning needs and learning context.

Building individual learning skills and capacities is probably the areaof most common overlap between distance learning and developments inU.S. education, particularly in adult education. Brookfield (1986) makesthe important point that self-directed learning is a goal, not a given, foradult students, and distance educators offer various methods of achievingthat goal. Holmberg (1985) considers student autonomy an essential fac-tor in distance education, higher education, and adult education. He notesthe advantages of distance learning in fostering this individual autonomy:

The distance student is placed in a situation where he has much greaterchances of individually selecting what he is to apply himself to than thoseconventional students for whom attendance in a classroom is compulsory.This is so because he is provided with — and works on his own with

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— self-instructional material, usually with references to literature ofvarious kinds and with much more individualised tutoring, which he canpersonally influence to a greater extent through his responses or initiativesthan is normal in a classroom situation. (P. 19)

The context connection then further aids the student's learning by buildingon past knowledge and experience, thus empowering the student withinhis or her context in the best sense, by building knowledge and skills withand within the comprehensive understanding needed to apply that knowledgeand those skills effectively. As another European distance researcher notes:

The offer of subject content must be so structured as to allow the learnerto work from the basis of his own previous experience and knowledge,and from that to gain transferable insights with the aid of his new ac-quired tools of analysis, to integrate new knowledge with old and tobuild up a positive attitude to self-directed learning in general. In thiscontext it is important not only to make the student conscious of subject-related objectives but also of general educative goals (Rebel 1987, 22)

This admonition could well be derived from the recommendations ofAmerican educators like Ernest Boyer:

The college of quality remains a place where the curricular and the co-curricular are viewed as having a relationship to each other. At a timewhen social bonds are tenuous, students, during their collegiate years,should discern the reality of their dependency on each other. They mustunderstand what it means to share and sustain traditions. Communitymust be built. (Boyer 1987, 195)

Boyer also noted the same concern from virtually a global perspective:"More coherence is required to relate the core program to the lives ofstudents and the world they are inheriting" (p. 90). The goal set by Boyerfor American higher education also reflects and extends concerns and prac-tices of distance education internationally. American educators themselvescan do no less than they recommend for students: to understand the con-text they inhabit in the widest possible sense in order to make decisionsand act with and within the resources and opportunities available.

References

Astin, A. 1985. Achieving Educational Excellence. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

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Bell, T., et al. 1986. To Secure the Blessings of Liberty. Washington, DC:American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Bennett, W. 1986. Address at Harvard University, published in The Chroni-cle of Higher Education, 15 October, 1986.

Bloom, A. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simonand Schuster.

Boyer, E. 1987. College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. NewYork: Harper and Row.

Brookfield, S. 1986. Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.

Chickering, A., and Z. Gamson. 1987. Seven principles for good prac-tice in undergraduate education. American Association of Higher Educa-tion Bulletin, 29 (7):3-7.

Commonwealth Secretariat. 1987. Commonwealth Cooperation in OpenLearning. Summary Report of a Study carried out for the CommonwealthSecretariat by the International Extension College and the Council forEducational Technology.

Delling, R. M. 1987. Toward a theory of distance education. ICDE Bulletin,13 (January): 21-25.

Finn, C., D. Ravitch, and H. Roberts. 1985. Challenges to the Humanities.Epilogue by William J. Bennett. New York: Holmes and Meier.

Granger, D. 1986. From context to content in distance learning. Paperdelivered at the International Conference on Distance Education, May,Vancouver, BC.

Holmberg, B. 1985. Status and Trends of Distance Education. Lund,Sweden: Lector Publishing.

. 1986A. Improving study skills for distance students. Open Learn-ing, 1 (3):29-33.

. 1986B. A discipline of distance education. Paper delivered at theWorld Congress on Education and Technology, May, Vancouver, BC.

Holmberg, B. 1987. Student autonomy in theory and practice. Paperdelivered at the International University Without Walls Conference, JuneVienna, Austria.

Jarvis, P. 1987. Three forms of learning in social context. In Lifelong Lear-ning Research Conference Proceedings, ed. W. Rivera and S. Walker,153-157. College Park, MD: The University of Maryland.

Jevons, F. 1986. Dual Mode Institutions — The Way Forward. Paperdelivered at the International Conference on Distance Education, June,Vancouver, BC.

Mortimer, K. et al. 1984. Involvement in Learning. Washington, DC: Na-tional Institute of Education.

Palmer, P., 1987. Community, conflict, and ways of knowing. Change,

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19 (5) (September/October): 20-25.Rebel, K. 1987. The role of group learning in multi-media distance teaching.

Open Learning, 2 (1):19-24.Wilson, R. 1988. A critic joins the staff of one of academe's best friends.

Chronicle of Higher Education, 34 (21) (3 February): A21.Wright, T. 1987. Putting independent learning in its place. Open Learn-

ing, 2 (1):3-7.

PUBLICATIONS AWARDS, 1988

The National University Continuing Education Association (NUCEA)Independent Study Division is committed to promoting research andpublication by Its members and to recognizing scholarship In the field ofindependent study by nonmembers.

If you have written on the subjects of independent study, continuingeducation, or higher education, or if you know of another member of theIndependent Study Division who has, please let us know. Items bynonmembers are also eligible for recognition, but only for research orpublication within the area of independent study.

GUIDELINES FOR AWARDS

Types of submisslon-any book article, or written version of a paperdelivered at a professional meeting; also, any graduate dissertation orthesis.

Subject areas-(for members of the Independent Study Division) independentstudy, adult and continuing education, and higher education; (fornonmembers) independent study only.

Time frame-recognition is given each April, during the NUCEA conference,to items published or delivered in the preceding calendar year. Workpublished In 1988 will be recognized at the 1989 conference. If you had anarticle or other item accepted for publication In 1988, but not scheduledfor publication until 1989, please submit it next year.

Charles A. Wedemeyer Award. Qualified books, theses, and dissertations areevaluated by the Publications Committee. Entries that have unusual meritor make a significant contribution to the field of Independent study willreceive the Charles A. Wedemeyer Award.

Elizabeth Powell Award. Qualified articles and written versions of papersare evaluated by the Publications Committee. The authors of works selectedby this committee according to the above criteria receive the ElizabethPowell Award.

To be considered for any award, all items should be received by January 15,1989. Send four copies of articles and papers (photocopies areacceptable), or one copy of a book or thesis, to:

Judith KellyAssistant DirectorDepartment of Independent Learning120 Mitchell BuildingPenn State UniversityUniversity Park, PA 16802

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