Distance Learners in Higher Education: Institutional Responses for Quality Outcomes. - Review - book review

Community College Review, Spring, 1999 by Iris Weisman

Distance Learners in Higher Education: Institutional Responses for Quality Outcomes edited by Chere Campbell Gibson. Atwood Publishing, Madison, Wisconsin. 1998, 156 pages. ISBN 1-891859-23-4.

In Distance Learners in Higher Education: Institutional Responses for Quality Outcomes, Chore Campbell Gibson and her colleagues explore a variety of topics related to distance learners. The contributors are primarily seasoned professionals who hold positions related to distance education, academic technology, or the fields of adult, continuing, or vocational education at universities in the United States and Canada. Instead of presenting a "how to" book about distance education, they focus on their experiences and research findings as educators and relate this information to distance learners in higher education. In addition, the reader is pointed to resources about distance education in the final chapter through a useful list of books, journals, newsletters, and World Wide Web sites regarding distance education.

The title suggests that two questions will be answered in this text: Who are distance learners in higher education, and what can higher education institutions do to provide quality education at a distance? The first question is answered in Chapter 1. From an analysis of the existing literature, Thompson informs us that distance learners are likely to be older, female, employed on a full-time basis, and married. However, she couches this description in the caveat that the profile "even for an individual learner ... must be [understood as] tentative and dynamic" (p. 19) and that the distance education population as a whole is heterogeneous.

This profile could imply that distance education has had a greater impact on four-year colleges and universities than it has had on community colleges (where students already tend to be older, female, and employed on a full-time basis). Distance education provides an avenue for the nontraditional student to enroll in the "senior" institutions, thus changing the profile of their student body. For senior institutions, this change in student population brings to the forefront a question that community colleges have been grappling with for years: How do we serve the educational needs of those students who have work, family, and community responsibilities that compete with learning for their time, energy, and attention? This new question for the senior institutions is reflected in Gibson's observation in Chapter 7: Distance education has had an impact on enrollment in higher education courses, by serving "women pursuing postsecondary education, ... husbands [whose] wives work, ... older persons (beyond the traditional age of 21) enrolled in degree programs, and men and women alike considering recareering in their 30s and 40s" (p. 121).

The authors also answer the second question implied by this book's title: What can education institutions do to provide quality education at a distance? The answer, however, may not be what the reader expects. A central theme running through the seven chapters is that "we, as distance educators, need to be learner-centered, reflective practitioners" (p. 139). Thus, like all other educators, distance educators focus on quality education. Their perspective, however, must widen to include the distance education context. As discussed in various chapters in this volume, distance educators share many challenges with their colleagues who teach on campus: how to address gender issues, cultural diversity, barriers to access, communication problems, and students' academic self-concept; how to develop learner support systems; and how to enhance learning strategies and student motivation.

Distance education, however, introduces another level of complexity into the already complex field of teaching and learning. For example, there are specific skills involved with learning at a distance. As Gibson points out in Chapter 7, the lack of these skills will affect students' academic self-concept as well as their course performance.

In addition, the context of learning at a distance exacerbates problems relating to these same concerns. For example, in Chapter 2, Burge discusses gender bias in distance education. She presents the argument that the difficulties that women face in participating in higher education may be compounded in distance education, particularly distance education based on technology, a field that is both male-oriented and maledominated.

Likewise, distance education challenges the institution to avoid unintended discrimination based on access (or lack thereof) to the technology used in distance education. Access, in this situation, relates to physical access, fiscal access, and psychological access. (Because community colleges have as one of their basic principles the commitment to access, the issue of access in distance education is particularly important to community college professionals.)

Other topics that relate to teaching, learning, and distance learners are presented in the remaining chapters. Learning styles, cultural diversity, and distance learning are discussed by Sanchez and Gunawardena in Chapter 3. Gibson writes about the impact that distance education can have on learners' academic self-concept in Chapter 4 and uses ecological systems theory to explore the context in which distance learners live and study. (Gibson also pulls all the chapters together in a final chapter titled, "In Retrospect.") In Chapter 5, Olgren presents a general discussion of effective learning strategies and their implications for course design. Anderson and Garrison describe the nature of educational communication and six types of educational interactions in Chapter 6.