Activity 3.2 (Essay)

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS REGARDING DISTANCE LEARNING

Distance learning is a very useful alternative of learning for many students. As  it offers a whole new way of acquiring and sharing knowledge it also helps to promote autonomous learning; however, as much as it can be helpful it can be difficult to deal with, mainly because we are facing a not-so-conventional way of taking/giving a course.

Usually the students that choose to take distance courses over face-to-face ones do it because it just seems like a better option for them. Students who have a job might prefer to take a distance class over a present class due to their work schedule. Also people who choose distance learning usually have a stronger motivation towards learning and can be more independent than the learners from the traditional learning.

As I mentioned before, there are some things that can be more difficult in distance courses compared to face-to face courses. One of those things is that the communication teacher-student can be somewhat hard because they do not really see each other in person, but clearly there are ways to ease that situation at least a little. For this issue, I think the best we can do is to use the different ways of communication we have through technology and internet, such as e-mail or skype. If we show interest in try to keep touch with our students, answer their questions and such, they will probably grow an interest in trying to keep communication with us too.

Moreover, the feedback might represent a problem too. If the students do not get the expected amount of feedback, they can get discouraged towards the class. As a learner we need reassurance of our knowledge and we obviously need to know if the effort we are making is enough or even taken into account. As teacher we should be aware of the previous and try our best to give the needed feedback at an appropriate time. We can do so by sending mails to our students with the necessary comments or using the school platform—if we have one, like UABC with Blackboard.

Another problem, also related to communication, could be the lack of cooperation between learners. It can be more problematic to try to make the learners collaborate with each other or even communicate with each other when, in most cases, they do not even know each other in real life. In this case, we can promote this communication through cooperative work, making them discuss topics in online forums, comment on each other’s work, etc.

Finally, I can just say that many of the problems related to distance courses have solutions. For me, a successful distance class is all about good communication, if we are informed about what our students are doing and how they are coping with the activities of the course we can have more accurate grades and give better feedback; meanwhile, the learners can also achieve a better understanding of the topics and a better experience overall if they get the chance to share their ideas with other people but themselves.