Best Practices

         

       Some wonder what the best practices for distance education learner is it more effective than the traditional classroom setting. Perhaps years ago people would say that the best practices would be the classroom setting. Best practice pedagogy is becoming more of an important issue as initial implementation technological problems and challenges are solved and online education becomes a more prevalent method of instruction. Whether it is professional development, training, or content courses, high school, undergraduate or graduate, electronic courses have saturated the education and training markets.  However there are question we must ask to understand the importance of technology for best practice in online education. I do understand that distance education being taught in a manner that allows for students to learn and understand material, or is it presented in a largely text-based format? Does the present format of lesson presentation increase student achievement or are there better methods? Does the presentation of material affect student achievement or dropout rates? Can students understand complex materials via a text-only format? Do best practice online methods increase student satisfaction? Are there methods for addressing and reducing the incidence of online cheating and plagiarism? There is growing concern among online instructors that the methods used to instruct students may not be working at addressing the questions above. So, what does the ITDE manager look for when deciding to improve or initiate online instruction? The answer focuses on four areas of concern: higher level thinking, assessment, dropout or abandonment rates, and plagiarism or cheating and a best practice measure that, if implemented, will make a huge positive difference (Smith, 2006).

          
           Plagiarism or outright cheating has arisen as a grave concern for online educators due to unlimited student access to material. One method of reducing the likelihood of students copying someone else's work is the use of visual representations, which produces a unique product that cannot be copied from others, facilitating original work and thoughts. The reported dropout rates from distance education courses are very high. A recent study by Wang, Foucar-Szocki, and Griffin (2003) has indicated that the current dropout rate from distance education courses is 26%. The analysis of reasons why students choose to drop out of distance courses indicates lack of motivation, poor instructional design, and lack of interactivity. Given these factors, instructional design again becomes a key issue for online courses. High-quality assessments go hand in hand with deeper thinking. Assessment in an online environment is becoming a crucial issue to understand and employ because of the free access to the Internet. This phenomenon has drastically increased the incidence of plagiarism among students in the online environment (Mason, 2002). For this reason, the use of quality and deep assessments must be adopted. The attributes of quality assessments, according to Mason, are: they are authentic and holistic; they are the vehicles for improvement; and they are reliable, valid, and cater to a variety of learning styles and needs. Visual representations meet each of these criteria as assessment tools. I believe like Wang that the dropout rate is still high and this is still case in society.

Reference

 Carr, S. (2000). As distance education comes of age, the challenge is keeping the students. The        Chronicle of Higher Education, 46(23), 39-41.

Mason, R. (2002). Rethinking assessment for the online environment. In C. Vrasidas & G. V. Glass (Eds.), Distance education and distributed learning (pp. 57-74). Greenwich, CT: Information Ages.

Smith, L. M. (2006). Best practices in distance education. Distance Learning, 3(3), 59-66. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/230695897?accountid=12085.

Wang, G., Foucar-Szocki, D., & Griffin, O. (2003). Departure, abandonment, and dropout of e-learning: Dilemma and solutions: Saratoga Springs, NY: Maisie Center e-Learning Consortium.