Three observations from article

1. I was unaware of the large number of corporate universities. I was surprised to read that these types of universities could outnumber traditional public universities within a decade. While corporations seem to have embraced distance learning, I’m curious to know how prevalent this type of learning is in the non-profit sector. I can attest that distance learning (and continuing education in general) is lacking in the realm of informal education. DE seems like a promising solution for many museums and other informal learning institutions that lack the monetary and personnel resources to provide professional development for their employees.

2. The physical science vs. social science approach to distance education was also new to me. Admittedly, I had a more reductionist view of DE in which the term “distance” referred to the physical space between the learner and the instructor. I’m very interested in learning how to make DE more dynamic and responsive to learner differences. This is something that educators struggle with in a traditional classroom, and I’m eager to learn how to resolve some of these same issues in DE.

3. I had never stopped to think about the different components of distance education, but the Hierarchical System of Distance Education makes these components easier to understand. It was interesting to learn how all of the different subsystems are interrelated.