General Education Issues, Distance Education Practices: Building Community and Classroom Interaction Through the Integration of Curriculum, Instructional Design, and Technology

Abstract

The review of a case study of the design and development of a single undergraduate course would be a small step toward deter mining the role of distance learning in the implementation of the best practices in general education. For the purposes of this post mortem, key instructional design decisions, including the choices of distance learning methodologies, will be discussed in relation ship to general education objectives. The role of distance learning in general education can best be determined with further critical analysis of the role of distance learning in the broader context, with a review of a variety of cases using each of Jones's and Ewell's (1993) areas of best practice as one template for evaluation. Our approach to designing a distance education course was to learn by doing. What follows is a discussion of what worked and what didn't work within the context of general principles outlined by re searchers in the area of general education and distance learning. As members of the Innovations in Distance Education (IDE) project at The Pennsylvania State University, our team members were action researchers; they started with a real teaching-learning problem, pro posed solutions, and tested our assumptions along the way. We sug gest that An Emerging Set of Guiding Principles and Practices for the Design and Development of Distance Education (Innovations in Distance Education, 1998), established as part of the IDE project, might serve as yet another important template for evaluation of the role of distance learning in effective general education.