DISTANCE LEARNING JOURNEY by Caitlin Pine

In the article Distance Education: Definitions, Generations and Key Concepts and Future Directions (Abdullah Saykılı, 2018) Saykill says Social Presence is integral to learning and the success of a distance learner.

pinex014 — 2023-10-25 22:01:59 UTC

A few of our course readings have mentioned "correspondence courses" as the precursors of online learning. It made me wonder how or if those courses had any social presence. So I searched the American Journal of Distance Education for "correspondence courses".

pinex014 — 2023-10-25 22:07:25 UTC

The first result was this fascinating essay by Holstein, J.A. (1992) an instructor who described his difficulty replicating his in person lectures with written materials delivered via mail.

pinex014 — 2023-10-25 22:08:53 UTC

His solution was to annotate the assigned text with comments in brackets on how the reader should understand each passage.

pinex014 — 2023-10-25 22:19:15 UTC

It looked really hard to read. I thought Hypothesis would have been a great tool for him to use.

The next article to catch my eye was

pinex014 — 2023-10-25 22:20:55 UTC

What I was hoping to find was correspondence between students and these distinguished scholars. Examples of how bonds were formed over their mail communication. But, the author's research did not include any communications.

Apparently one of the reasons the school failed was the prickly personality of the school's founder, Carter Woodson. So there might be the evidence of the need for a positive social presence....

I concluded my rabbit hole with an article outside of the journals explicitly for Distance Education.

pinex014 — 2023-10-26 01:45:40 UTC

I ended up reading about The Society to Encourage Studies at Home (1873 -1897). It was an intentionally low profile organization of wealthy educated women who set up a system to educate other women via correspondence. The goal was to create a liberal arts sort of education - that society would not allow them to undertake formally.

It was designed to work within the daily chores of literate, middle class women. They were encouraged not to take notes as they read. But to write memorandums of what they took from the readings the day after. The Memorandums would be mailed to their "Correspondents" for feedback. Exams were given, but they were, non competitive and open book.

Higher Ed today could learn from this informal, and highly personalized tutoring scheme.

pinex014 — 2023-10-26 01:46:05 UTC

References

pinex014 — 2023-10-26 02:26:49 UTC

Bergmann, H. F. (2001). “The Silent University”: The Society to Encourage Studies at Home, 1873-1897. The New England Quarterly, 74(3), 447–477.

Holstein, J. A. (1992). Making the written word “speak”: Reflections on the teaching of correspondence courses. The American Journal of Distance Education., 6(3), 22–33.

Hampel. R.L.(2023) What Might Have Been: A First-Rate Black Correspondence School, 1927-1930, American Journal of Distance Education, 37:2, 151-156.

Saykılı, A. (2018). Distance education: Definitions, generations, key concepts and future
directions. International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 5(1), 2-17.