Coming to Terms: ALN

Distance education “is about access” says Victor Kobayashi of the University of Hawaii. It recognizes that not all learners have access to face to face instruction on campus at regularly scheduled times during fixed terms. Al Powell of Colorado State University gives a succinct definition of distance education, which has a 200 year U.S. history: “Distance education takes place when the teacher and student are separated by time, distance, or both.” Distance education enables people to proceed at their own paces, places, and schedules, frequently on their own, independent of classmates and teachers. Yet, distance conveys an unfortunate provider-centric connotation—do learners think of themselves as distant? To the contrary, many faculty and students report they experience a strong sense of community and what Burks Oakley of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign calls “mind-to-mind” presence in online interaction.

Another term, distributed learning, aims to bridge the distance between teaching and learning. Distributed learning emphasizes information technology for learning beyond the classroom:

Distributed learning supports a "pull" model of education in which a person engages in learning activities at his or her own pace and at a self-selected time. This is in contrast to the traditional "push" model of education in which the learners synchronize their needs and schedules to the delivery of the instructor. (The California State University Center for Distributed Learning: http://www.cdl.edu/html/dist.html)

Emanating from environments in which online programs were initially housed with campus CIOs rather than with traditional academic departments, distributed education is a term widely used in federal government, as the term e-learning is used in corporations for self-directed modular learning.

The terms online learning and web-based learning are generic; both emphasize that a component of instruction employs the internet. Including formal and informal learning, the terms may be used for hybrid or blended courses in which components of instruction are face to face and online. But none of these names really conveys the distinctive characteristics of ALN, asynchronous learning networks.

George Otte of City University of New York points out that the terms distance and distributed may disguise what’s really needed: “a thorough rethinking of the status quo.” A rethinking would include, says Tom Abeles of On the Horizon, an expansion of the faculty role to embrace all modes of learning and a reevaluation of academic culture:

What is it worth to a student to have an on-campus experience and what is it worth for a click space experience?

Murray Turoff envisions learning in the academy of the near future:

The sooner that distance learning technologies become commonly used to support face to face classes, the sooner we can leave it up to students whether they want to attend face to face classes or not. Maybe this will still take a decade to accomplish, but it will come, and then the concept of distance learning or distributed learning becomes obsolete and we have ALN or LN for all courses. No artificial separation between regular students and distance students would be the preferred and simplified administrative operation of a University.

(Continued on page 3)