Keywords

Introduction

The world of open, distance, and digital education (ODDE) may be driven by institutions and their desire to serve broader markets and transcend international borders, but the work of ODDE occurs at the local level, in individual classes and through individual people’s interactions in the pursuit of learning. These interactions may involve course content, classmates, instructors (Moore, 1989), and interfaces (Hillman, Willis, & Gunawardena, 1994), or even interactions with networks (e.g., people, resources, and networks beyond the regular class boundaries; Dennen, 2013). Most of these types of interaction can be found in contemporary formal distance learning contexts, while more informal and smaller-scoped learning contexts may involve a smaller combination of interactions. Regardless of scope and context, the interplay of people, content, and technology is at the core of ODDE.

As the SECTION V title implies, the four main topics covered in this section are learners, teachers, media, and technology. Although each chapter focuses on one of these four topical categories, their contents and argument carry implications for the other topics in this section, too. In other words, successful online learning links learners, teachers, media, and technology a systemic and, in many ways, symbiotic relationship.

A People-First Approach to ODDE

A people-first approach to ODDE (Dennen, 2020) is one that continuously considers the needs of the humans for whom the online learning systems exist. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, educators and learners worldwide found themselves engaged in emergency remote teaching (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020), often manifest as some form of online learning. As tempting (and at times necessary) as it was to focus on the technologies that could deliver subject matter content to students, it was most important to put people first in this endeavor, ensuring that students’ needs, pedagogical and otherwise, were met (Dennen, 2020). After all, one could develop the most sophisticated learning tools but the effort would be all for naught if people lacked the access, knowledge, disposition, and environment necessary to make productive use of the tools. As a scholar working directly in this area, I was asked to offer support and advice to many educators struggling to shift their classes online in response to the pandemic. I issued the reminder, “people first, content second, technology third,” to help educators keep people at the forefront of their considerations, all while doing the necessary work of locating and/or developing digital course content and learning how to use distance learning technologies. I shared this message via multiple blog posts and reiterated it across various professional development webinars and workshops because of the tendency for individuals to focus first on technology when making a shift in teaching modality. The message resonated deeply with people, who were rapidly discovering what experienced online instructors know very well: that technology can unite instructors and learners across differences of time and space, but when technology takes center stage in these interactions, some learners may be left behind.

“People first, content second, technology third,” is not only a mantra for education during difficult times, but represents a philosophy for approaching online learning at any time. People are the reason why the educational need or opportunity exists. Class success is often measured by whether people persist, learn, and feel that their needs have been met in the educational experience. Conversely, when people feel uncomfortable or have unmet needs, whether related to the course context or not, learning becomes more challenging. Learning institutions have recognized the importance of viewing learners – including online learners who may never visit a physical campus – through a holistic lens and, in response, offering not only learning supports but also fostering technological skills, wellness, and community (Babacan & Thurgood, 2021).

Whereas learners drive the need for ODDE and teachers support the endeavor, content is the raison d’être of a course. Learning content can be delivered to learners through a variety of media. Whether designed specifically for a class or adopted from a preexisting source, the content represents a pathway to attaining the course learning objectives. Although content may be largely unknown by learners at the beginning of a course, by the end of a class, successful learners “own” that course’s content. In other words, when learners master the course learning objectives, the course content is theirs to apply in future settings of their choosing.

For any given course, content may remain stable across class sections, even as teachers, learners, and course technologies change. Content often brings consistency to educational settings. When it comes in the form of predesigned media, whether static (e.g., books, videos) or interactive (e.g., games and simulations), all stakeholders in the learning context can point to the media as a concrete example of what is to be learned. Still, sometimes content is not just interactive, but also dynamic, delivered by instructors or co-constructed among the members of a class. Regardless of the media and approach, content is inert until the people in a class do something with it.

Technology may come third in this people-first approach, but that does not mean that it is unimportant. Instead, technology should be considered foundational to the interactions among people and content. Much as we do not expect people to spend time marveling at the foundations of our buildings, but rather seamlessly enjoying the structures that sit atop them, educators should not strive to make technology the focal point of their classes. Rather, technology is the enabler for a class’s online learning interactions and should be strong, simple, stable, and usable.

All three of these dimensions – people, content, and technology – are critically important to ODDE. Although each dimension can be explored independently, and individual studies in distance education often focus on just a single dimension, the three are fully interdependent in practice. Moreover, they are dynamic and context-dependent. No single system or approach has been shown to be best for all learning scenarios. Although guidance from theories, research, and policies at all levels should be consulted when designing specific distance and digital learning solutions, local knowledge of learners and context also should be reflected in design, facilitation, and assessment decisions .

An Overview of Chapters

The chapters in this section explore the experiences, needs, and competencies of people (learner and teachers) as they engage in ODDE; the media that hosts content; and the technology that supports both the people and media. These chapters contain references to theories and frameworks that are commonly associated with and researched in ODDE and in some cases addressed in earlier sections of the book, including transactional distance theory (Moore, 1993), cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1994), the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1980), and experiential learning theory (Kolb, 2014).

Learners are at the core of ODDE; they are the people being served by flexible digital learning opportunities. The flexibility of online courses has made them particularly attractive to certain population sectors. Von Prümmer shows how online learning has created new opportunities for women to earn postsecondary degrees and for women to work in higher education settings. She highlights many of the social, cultural, and personal forces that have led women to become distance learners and that make participation in any form of education a juggling act in already busy lives. Von Prümmer leaves no stone unturned in her exploration of women’s roles and experiences in distance learning, considering gendered differences in fields of study, accessibility of technology, and forms of communication.

Lee looks at a different sector of the online learning population: doctoral students. Online doctoral students are typically different from campus doctoral students in terms of their demographic and goals. Many of the online doctoral programs that have been developed in recent years serve learners who seek to apply research knowledge in professional rather than academic settings. Again, flexibility and access are key attributes that make online doctoral education attractive to learners. Lee notes that these online doctoral learners may struggle due to feelings of isolation or anxiety related to technology and explores many of the advantages and disadvantages of online doctoral programs for varied populations.

ODDE clearly provides learners with increased options and opportunities for earning degrees and, at the postsecondary and professional development level, advancing in their careers. However, the existence of these options alone does not guarantee success. Various learner attributes and skills contribute to the success or failure of online learners, and several of the chapters in this section consider some of these skills and related behaviors.

Yalcin reviews learner attributes, such as technology access and socioeconomic status, that can have a profound influence on whether learners are able to effectively participate in ODDE. Further, he shows how macro-, meso-, and microlevel entities can all work to support learners and increase their success. Additionally, Yalcin gives an overview of the basic technology skills and related competences that allow people to be successful online learners. Through this chapter, Yalcin reminds us that although online learning improves access to education for many learners, it is not a global panacea, and some individuals are still at a disadvantage.

In a complementary chapter, Martin and Castañeda explore digital literacy skills, which are equally important for learners and teachers. Through a timeline, they show the development of thought surrounding the concept of digital literacy. Although digital literacy is considered important – online learners and teachers obviously need to be fluent in the tools and practices associated with the medium they have chosen – definitions of “digital literacy” are multifarious and poorly synthesized. Martin and Castañeda discuss several frameworks across different learning contexts and identify areas in which they overlap and diverge. Rather than problematize the existence of so many frameworks, they demonstrate the utility of these frameworks and provide insights into how each provides important considerations for online learning.

Ehlers focuses on Future Skills, a set of competencies that people need to be successful in the world. His chapter considers the needs of today’s learners when they enter the workforce, including projections for children who are years from entering the workforce, and considers the role that educational institutions should play in ensuring students are well prepared. The digital literacies discussed by Martin and Castañeda are one component of the larger Future Skills framework, which also includes skill sets in areas such as decision-making and design thinking. From Ehlers’ perspective, these are not merely skills to be checked off as each one is mastered. Instead, their mastery represents a holistic approach to becoming a full and valued participant in the workforce of tomorrow.

Although learners may need basic competencies, as outlined by Yalcin, and perhaps even more extensive digital literacy skills, as presented by Martin and Castañeda, in order to function in online learning spaces, motivation also plays a role in learner success. Motivation is important for keeping learners engaged for the duration of their learning experience. Motivation must be cultivated despite transactional distance, which can act as an opposing force. Fryer, Shum, and Nakao consider motivation in ODDE at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, showing how learners can be intrinsically motivated and propel themselves forward in an online class and also how they may be motivated by external factors such as teachers, media, and technology. Fryer, Shum, and Nakao explore the role of various learning strategies, such as gamification, and learning technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality, in motivating learners. They highlight the connection between online learning motivation and several motivational theories and look closely at how online learning technologies can incorporate principles of motivation.

Dennen and Jones discuss the role of the online instructor, focusing on instructors’ responsibilities for shaping multiple dimensions of a course. For all of the competencies and digital literacy skills that online learners need, there are multiple correlating online instructor skills that are necessary. Pedagogy still rests at the forefront of the online instructor’s responsibilities and required skill set, but pedagogy alone is not enough to ensure that learning takes place. Intersecting with topics from chapters written from the learner perspective, Dennen and Jones demonstrate how successful online instructors offer not only pedagogical activities, but also provide the necessary structure, motivation, technical support, and social environment to help learners succeed. They also encourage continuous consideration of various ethical issues that arise in online learning spaces and the role external networks may play in online learning.

Bong and Liu consider media usage behaviors, sharing various typologies for classifying online learners. Media usage behaviors provide insights into how learners access and use digital course content as well as how they interact with instructors and peers through learning communication technologies. These behaviors may or may not reflect learner competencies, and through this overview, Bong and Liu demonstrate how online learners can vary widely in terms of media usage. Learners’ use of media can be examined in terms of its intensity, frequency, and purpose although, as Bong and Liu point out, this is an area of research that is currently under-theorized and not well synthesized across typologies. They provide directions for future researchers to consider, both in terms of newer or emerging technologies, in which learner use is not yet well understood, and familiar technologies that can be used to capture and analyze aspects of media usage behaviors.

Online learning tools can be used to help learners interact with instructors and peers in a distributed manner (asynchronously) or in real time (synchronously). In their respective chapters, Davidson-Shivers and Rand provide an overview of asynchronous tools used to support ODDE, and Lowenthal provides an overview of synchronous tools. In both chapters, the authors are clear that tools alone are limited and that what matters is how instructors use those tools.

Davidson-Shivers and Rand list a variety of specific tool categories that can be used to support asynchronous learning interactions, discussing the pros and cons of each. They also share specific strategies for promoting learner interaction via asynchronous tools, rooted in relevant educational theories. In addition to the many ideas that they offer to instructors seeking to foster asynchronous learner interactions, at the end they ask a provocative question about the necessity of learner interaction in ODDE.

Lowenthal is provocative in another way, exploring whether a distinction between synchronous and asynchronous tools is meaningful in this current moment, when tools are increasingly multifunctional and can be used for either or both synchronous and asynchronous learning depending on how a course is designed. The modality distinction is blurred because synchronous activities can be recorded and reviewed asynchronously and asynchronous tools can emulate synchronicity when learners access and communicate through them simultaneously. Whether differentiating between synchronous and asynchronous tools remains useful moving into the future remains to be seen, although the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous learning requirements surely will continue to be germane to both teachers and learners who seek to plan their learning experiences and may have varying levels of schedule flexibility.

Other chapters address tools that serve specific functions related to learning. For example, Ifenthaler, in his chapter on automated essay scoring systems, provides insights into technologies that can help reduce the labor associated with assessing online learners. Assessment historically has been one of the challenges that limits the scalability of online learning endeavors. Although objective style assessments have been automatically scored for years, written assignments have remained in the domain of student work that must be evaluated by a human. While machines can easily be trained to identify whether learners selected the correct answer or to match simple learner input (e.g., numbers and words) to model responses, training computers to assess writing is much more complicated. It requires comparing learner essays to complex rules governing both the content and form of a written document. The complex and nuanced nature of essay assignments poses a challenge, but as Ifenthaler shares in his chapter, the technology is rapidly developing and has the potential to allow more diverse forms of assessment to be used in large online classes, including MOOCs, without increasing labor needs.

Di Mitri, Schneider, and Drachsler consider a different form of automation as they review research on multimodal tutors. These tutors are an example of two technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and learning analytics, working together to provide personalized learner experiences for learners. Whereas human instructors may have limited availability, AI-based tutors can be accessed and used as needed, expanding access to learning and learning possibilities.

Finally, Prinsloo explore the role that learning analytics play in ODDE more generally. In this chapter, he wrestles with the role that theory has played in the development of learning analytics as a discipline, demonstrating that although the field is not united around a singular theory, it is also not atheoretical. Prinsloo makes important connections between analytics and the learner-teacher dynamic, showing how analytics can be used to support pedagogy but also should be implemented with careful consideration for ethics and privacy. In other words, Prinsloo connects technology back to the people who it is designed to help.

Synthesis Across Chapters

The chapters in this section are deeply rooted in the theories, research, and practices of ODDE as they explore the individual components that are united in the classroom. Although each chapter has a unique topic, three main themes can be identified across chapters. These themes connect to larger, ongoing issues being explored in ODDE research and practice.

Learners and instructors have many of the same needs in ODDE, which is evident in the chapters about learners (Von Prümmer; Lee), instructors (Dennen and Jones), and the literacies and competencies that unite them (Martin and Castañeda; Yalcin; Ehlers). Organizations such as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE; http://iste.org) and the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (ibstpi; http://ibstpi.org) have developed and continuously refine competency lists for both instructors and students at all levels of education. The work done by ISTE, ibstpi, and other organizations globally indicates both the critical importance of identifying and developing learner and instructor skill sets for digital learning success and of creating pathways for practitioners to foster skill development. However, learners and instructors both may be affected by needs unrelated to digital literacies and competencies that nonetheless inhibit their performance in class. For this reason, it is important to always widen the lens and look holistically at the people involved in ODDE.

At all levels, we have an ethical obligation to take a holistic look at learners and instructors, considering their backgrounds and needs. Across multiple chapters, the authors raise ethical issues related to the topics they explore (Martin and Castañeda; Dennen and Jones; Prinsloo), and other authors demonstrate how open distance learning provides opportunities for populations whose needs may not be met via other modalities (Von Prümmer; Lee). The thread that runs through these discussions of ethics and different learner groups may be summed up as follows: no component of online learning is value-neutral and people-first considerations are always relevant and important.

Finally, the chapters that explore media and technology highlight the tensions between technology and its users. The chapters that directly engage how technology is used in the hands of learners and teachers alternately consider what learners do (Bong and Liu) and how technology is used to connect instructors and learners (Davidson-Shivers and Rand and Lowenthal). There is overlap between learners’ natural media usage and the synchronous and asynchronous technologies implemented for learning, although the tools that people use heavily in their everyday lives, such as social media, may not be as engaging as other, course-specific tools when used to support learning (Bond, Buntins, Bedenlier, Zawacki-Richter, & Kerres, 2020). As Fryer, Shum, and Nakao point out, tools are often developed without strong connections to motivational theory. However, the tools are here to stay and motivation and audience are important concerns when determining who should use the tools and how the tools should be used. Additionally, ongoing technological developments leave the field contemplating how automated technologies can be used to streamline instructional processes and offer new opportunities and insights in ODDE contexts (Ifenthaler; DiMitri, Schneider and Drachsler; Prinsloo).

The tension between humans and technologies as relates to interaction and automation is an important one to explore and extends the conversation begun in many of these chapters. Interaction has become a focal point of much distance learning research (Martin, Sun, & Westine, 2020), with deep roots reflected in Moore’s early work focused on interaction and transactional distance (Moore, 1989, 1993); Anderson and Garrison’s (1998) suggestion that communication in online classes should be reciprocal, consensual, and interactive. National regulations for online learning and accreditation bodies have reified these ideas. For example, the United States Department of Education has defined regular and substantive interaction in the Code of Federal Regulations for Education (34 CFR § 600.2), which has direct implications for federal online learning requirements. In other words, the government is regulating how and how frequently learners should be required to interact their online courses. Although many of the interaction options provided in this regulation involve learner-instructor or learner-learner interactions, provisions are made for interactions with automated systems, such as the multimodal tutor discussed by DiMitri, Schneider, and Drachsler.

Overall, advances in online learning automation could have implications for redefining the instructor role. Over the last two decades, the adoption of increasingly sophisticated learning management systems has relieved instructors of some of their earlier managerial and technological tasks, making recordkeeping simpler and providing a single, consistent learning platform that is typically supported institutionally. Automated grading systems are already in use for some types of assessments and, as Ifenthaler demonstrates, essay grading systems are increasingly becoming a reality. Analytics, as discussed by Prinsloo, can help promote student success, but we still need to figure out how to best implement learning analytic systems in ways that not only provide institutions with data, but also help instructors better support students. With increased use of technologies to teach, assess, and track students, some parts of the instructor’s role will naturally shrink. However, change in the instructor role and learner use of technology will likely be uneven across learning contexts and population sectors, reflecting differences in technology access, values, learner characteristics, and learning needs.

Conclusion

The chapters in this section of the handbook explore characteristics, needs, competencies, and responsibilities of online learners and teachers along with the media and technologies that can support them in their learning and teaching endeavors. As noted previously, advances in these technologies are shifting learner needs and competencies and teacher roles and responsibilities. Since the beginning of my career in higher education, a repeated question has led to excited rumblings and nervous fears expressed across different educational stakeholders: Will human instructors be replaced by computers? Selwyn (2019) engages this question head on, noting that the question is not a matter of whether computers can replace human instructors, or whether they will (and he says that they certainly can if we let them), but rather if they should. In Selwyn’s response, we can see the power and influence that people, both learners and teachers, have in this future. Looking across these chapters, and again considering the interrelationship between learners, teachers, media, and technology, my thoughts are that a “people-first” approach will continue to be valued even with ongoing technological advancements. It is incumbent on this generation and the next generation of researchers to not examine any one of these topics in isolation, but always attend to the larger systems. While changes in one area will necessitate corresponding adjustments in another, technological advancements can be used in ways that maximize learning gains. In practice, this means some tasks will be led or guided by the computer, with computerized feedback and monitoring, but humans will still be needed at various points and for specialized kinds of interaction, feedback, and monitoring. Learners and teachers, as well as other educational stakeholders (e.g., instructional designers, institutional and government leaders), will hopefully continue to recognize and exert their agency over the future of ODDE, celebrating people as the driving forces behind education, with media and technology leveraged as tools that help people reach their goals.