Thought-provoking questions raised at conference on distance and adult learning

The first Conference on Research in Distance and Adult Learning in Asia (CRIDALA 2000) was organized and hosted by the Centre for Research in Distance and Adult Learning of the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK). It took place at the OUHK from 21 to 24 June, 2000 and brought together delegates from Asia (Hong Kong, mainland China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Korea,), the Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines), North America (Canada and the USA), Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa), the United Kingdom, Israel, and Palestine. Yvonne Reed from the Department of Applied English Language Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, attended the conference and wrote this report.

Conference theme

The overall theme was ‘research as professional development’. According to the CRIDALA Conference Programme Book, p.16, this theme was chosen to draw attention to the need for research in delivery and management of distance education and adult education due to:

1. Enormous upsurge in demand for learning at a distance and the concerted effort made by distance education providers to meet this need;
2. The need for distance educators to fully understand and centrally situate research as well as determine their research priorities to achieve this;
3. The complex nature of distance education which demands that practice and theoretical frameworks and     philosophy should be constantly informed through enquiry;
4. The need to address the issue of research methodologies in an emerging field just finding its feet in    educational practice and research.

Six keynote presentations, forty papers, and eleven posters addressed the following six sub-themes of the conference:

• Open and distance learning research agenda for the 21st century;

• Enhancing teaching and learning through research;

• Cross-national, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and cross-institutional research;

• Mentoring, incentives, and rewards in research career development;

• Utilizing information and communication technologies in distance education research; and

• Research and policy nexus in distance education.

Keynote addresses

In his keynote address, Professor Michael Moore, Director of the American Centre for Study of Distance Education at Pennsylvania State University, spoke about a research agenda for the 21st century. He introduced a term that became widely used at the conference - the digital divide - noting that, in the United States, 85% of tertiary institutions will soon be offering courses online and that there has been an explosion of corporate interest in distance education with companies viewing education as a consumer commodity to be bought by those who can afford it. He asked many thought-provoking questions, which included the following:

• Is there a re-direction of the distance education mission from being a vehicle for rectifying inequalities and opening opportunities to that of cash-cow for increasing institutional profits?

• curriculum, and other educational dynamics?

• How should intellectual property issues be addressed?

• Should public policy intervene to address equity and access issues, and, if so, how?

• What does online education do to cultural diversity?

In her keynote address for the theme ‘Enhancing teaching and learning through research’, Professor Insung Jung of the National Open University of Korea focused on web-based distance education. A comprehensive review of recent journal articles on web-based instruction has led her to conclude that most of these focus on the technicalities of presenting information rather than on pedagogic issues. She argued that it is important to find out more about teaching students how to learn, especially in a web-based environment. Some of her research questions are as follows:

• What are some pedagogically sound design principles that can be used for visual layouts of web-based instruction (WBI)?

• Are they different from those identified in the study of ‘traditional’ distance education courses? How can instructors facilitate WBI in a way that applies the interactive conversational techniques that are emphasized in traditional distance education settings?

• How can WBI be designed to empower learners or increase learner autonomy?

Professor Peter Cookson, Associate Vice President for Research and Institutional Studies at Canada’s Athabasca University, presented a strong case for increased cross-institutional and cross-national research. In his view, much current research in comparative distance education lacks systematic, empirically grounded analyses, with many distance education researchers working in isolation.

He argued that effective collaborative research would enable researchers to engage in mutual professional development, increase understanding, share costs, and increase efficiency through division of labour. His presentation included a model for developing and comparing case studies across institutions. Professor Cookson is editor of a new online journal, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, which can be accessed at www.irrodl.org. (SAIDE’s director, Jennifer Glennie, is a member of this journal’s editorial board).

Professor Santosh Panda, Director of the Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, expressed a concern that research in distance education is not considered a career path in many universities. He argued that, where this is the case, there needs to be a change in institutional policy. He suggested that research should be undertaken by all teaching and non-teaching staff as part of their reflective practice. Professor Panda stated that there is an urgent need for training in research and for a mentoring system to support both novice researchers and experienced researchers who are working in new areas.

Professor Terry Evans, Director of Research in the Faculty of Education at Deakin University, focused on New Educational Technologies (NETs) and raised a large number of research questions, including the following:

• How will the NETs change the nature and organization of universities?

• What will the new NET-forms of university be?

• What are the consequences for nations, communities and individuals of NET-formed universities?

• Will the NETs re-divide and/or further divide the rich and poor nations of the world?

• Can the NETs be adapted to and incorporated with local languages and cultures in order that they may be sustained and enhanced for future generations? Or is the adoption of NETs a precursor to a level and form of globalization that will unify the world linguistically and culturally at the expense of local and regional differences, cultures and languages?

Professor Evans raised a number of questions about learning and learners:

• Does each generation of educational technology create a qualitatively different generation of learners? If so, what are the features of the NET generation of learners?

• To what extent are NETs used for ‘transmission’ forms of learning?

• To what extent are NETs used for dialogic forms of learning?

He noted that potential exists for Internet-based research dissemination and for new virtual communities of scholars, and pointed out that this raises issues of access and equity for scholars and researchers.

Dr Nick Farnes, Director of the International Centre for Distance Learning at the Open University, UK, considered relationships between research and policy that affect distance education. He noted the differences between distance education research policy - policy for promoting, funding and directing research in distance education - and distance education policy research - research into distance education policies such as the effects of open entry, what is taught, the media used, assessment procedures, and so forth. His questions included the following:

• What determines the strength of links between research and policy?

• What can researchers do if they want to strengthen the link but do not wish to be totally constrained by policy?

• How can distance education research be integrated into a knowledge management strategy for continuous improvement within institutions?

• What policies should be adopted at national and international levels to promote distance education research?

Throughout the conference, issues raised in keynote addresses, papers, and posters were debated in round table discussions organized around the sub-themes. At a final plenary session, common concerns arising from these discussions included the following:

• The role(s) of new technologies in distance education: Is there a danger of technology driving distance education rather than pedagogy driving technology? Through using new technologies are we opening up or restricting access to distance education?

• The need for professional development opportunities for distance educators and particularly for distance education researchers.

• The need for institutional support for and ‘reward’ of distance education researchers.

• The need for more effective dissemination and use of research findings.

• The need for research to be more clearly located within a theoretical framework.

• The need to give more emphasis to cross-cultural and cross-national investigations.

The challenge is to build a community of practice among researchers in distance education, perhaps through the establishment of some form of distance education research organization.

Notes

The quality of the research and institutional support work done by SAIDE was commended by both Michael Moore and Nick Farnes. In particular, mention was made of the work SAIDE did with the Department of Education on quality guidelines for distance education. I was pleased to be able to give SAIDE’s contact details to several interested delegates.

The paper that I presented, co-authored with Harriet Davis and Thabiso Nyabanyaba, was titled Investigating teachers’ ‘take-up’ of reflective practice from an in-service professional development teacher education programme in South Africa. When I showed photographs of one of the research sites - a severely under-resourced rural high school in which classes are held in rondavels without electricity or adequate window light - a comment from some Hong Kong delegates was that the learners were fortunate to have so much open space in which to play! At many of the schools in Hong Kong the only outdoor space is on the roof.

If the CRIDALA team at the Open University of Hong Kong, under the leadership of Professor Olugbemiro Jegede, announces any further conferences, I recommend participation. Every aspect was meticulously organized (including simultaneous Mandarin / English translation) and the hospitality included eleven-course Chinese meals, a dinner cruise on the harbour, and a tour of the Open University whose student numbers have grown from approximately 4,000 to 24,000 in a decade.