Lisa Waters' Response to the reading...

Since I have read this article before I decided to focus on section of the article titled Verifying the Validity of Transactional Distance. This section focuses on the consequences for the learners, as well as the consequences for the organization and/or the education system. A lot of the research referenced in the article ranged from the 1960's to the mid 90's, which makes me wonder if new research needs to be completed to investigate the shift in views on distance education as learners and educators are becoming more open to and experienced with distance education.

The major challenge for distance educators and learners is taking into consideration all of the possible variables that impact learning, but that no one has control over. In face to face learner there is some control over the learning environment, and there are obvious visual cues that can indicate the success or failure of an activity, however in distance education it is more challenging to control the learning environment, as well as the effectiveness of the activities. The other challenge is utilizing technology to create exceptional distance education. Technology, although it has it's many perks, can be expensive and also create challenges in the learning environment with issues from variations in software versions, to the limitations of bandwidth.

Being technologically skilled has become a major requirement for a wide variety of careers these days, and if individuals are gaining knowledge via the means of technology, then the cost of the investment to utilize technology is worth it to remain competitive and creative in what had widely been referred to as the digital age.

Recently I had a discussion with a friend about the effectiveness of distance education. I feel as though there are a lot of people out there who do not support distance education because they don't understand the potential that Distance Education offers. Many of those who are skeptical about the potential of Distance Education have either not taken a class online, or if they have it was more than 5-10 years ago and they did not take away from the class what they thought they could have if they had taken the class in a face to face environment.

One of the biggest complaints that I hear is that in Distance Education you lose the student discussions and student interaction, but based on the classes that I have taken so far in the Edtec program I feel that student interaction and class discussions happen as often in the distance environment as they do in the face to face, the interaction just happens in a different way. I think that it would be interesting to see a more recent study on the effectiveness of different types of distance education and to see how learners are conforming to this new approach of learning.