Different Ways to Help Distance Learners

According to Ron Howard “Traditional distance-learning systems have been designed around the learning isolate, an individual learner who generally works by him- or herself and has communication links with his or her tutor through the postal and telephone systems.” (Howard, 1995, p.105) understanding for distance learners all those individuals who take a course in an autonomous way keeping in touch with his/her tutor either through postal, telephone, and nowadays different social networks and platforms. Stating this, it is important to identify some of the main difficulties that distance students face throughout a distance course. Therefore, some of those difficulties involve asking and providing help, learning to be autonomous, lack of communication and difficulty to understand instructions. In this text we are going to explain each of those main difficulties and we will propose solutions to avoid them as well. 

It is well known that  being autonomous is one of the most important characteristics that a distant learner must have, however not all distance students have developed it and this is why it becomes a major issue when having to succeed on a distance course. Knowles (1990) suggested that as a person matures and ages his or his independence on an educator decreases (cited on Doodlers and Lindner, 2005, p.57) therefore, it is expected that sooner or later students will acquire that certain degree of autonomy required to succeed in distance education.  The question is, as future teachers or distance teachers, how can we motivate our students to reach that maturity needed to become autonomous? A good way to help our students and solve this problem could be motivating our students to work by themselves, showing them the wonders of being independent, creating activities to help hin/her to experiment being autonomous. Another way of helping them would be encouraging them to self assess their activities, that way they will realize how well they are performing at the subject, it will also provide them with the information to know their strong and weaknesses, and therefore it will encourage them to work their way into autonomous learning. 

The second most common difficulty that most distance learners face, is communication.  Probably, this is a difficulty that can be experienced not just on distance education but probably even in traditional education, since there are different factors that contribute to bad communication among teacher-students or student-student. Those could be that the student is shy and he is not used to ask for help or to ask to clarify instructions or even to ask for help. the lack of communication may lead to misunderstandings giving a result frustrated students who eventually will drop off the course. So one way to help this kind of students is providing as teachers a good environment of secureness so they would feel confident to ask without the fear of being judge for having doubts or ask for help. Maybe the teacher could also, create different activities to encourage team work, to get to know their classmates and develop an environment in which learners share and help each other. Richard Slatta (2007) in his article “Diversifying and Improving Student-Instructor Communication” mentions that communication is essential to succeed in any class. He also suggests that either students and teachers must show respect when communicating, remarking that all opinions are important and encouraging all students to participate in all activities through the course. It is also important to keep in mind that as distance teachers, it is difficult to keep communicated with all students. Therefore, we have to make an extra effort to keep in touch specially with those students that aren't participating or that we may think that they need some extra help to enrole in the activities. 

Lastly, Bad habits such as lack of discipline, proactivity and responsibility could be part of the major difficulties that the distance student has to upfront at some point of the course. Even when attending traditional courses, some students struggle when having to overcome some bad habits, making it even harder to deal on distance courses, because as we mentioned before, the distance learner must have some degree of autonomy in order to succeed. Said that, as teachers, we need to find ways to help our students to work on those difficulties and break the bad habits. It is not as simple as it seems because it requires the student willingness to leave behind those difficulties. However, there are some ways we can help. For example, just like we mentioned before with autonomy, we can motivate our students through self-assessment and or creating activities in which all students can help each other and contribute to improve their classmates experiences at class. It is good helping them find their strong and weaknesses. 

As a conclusion, the distance course teacher has a hard work to do, since they do need to work harder to get close to their students, they need to make things work in the course, and motivate students to enrole the course in a respectful and friendly way. It is also important to know students and to encourage them to get to know their classmates keeping their autonomy and helping others around. 

Bibliography: 

Advanced Methods in Distance Education: Applications and Practices for Educators, Administrators, and Learners

Kim E. Dooley 

James R. Lindner

Larry M. Dooley 

2005

Distance Education for Language Teachers : A UK Perspective Multilingual Matters

Ron Howard

1995

Distance Learning Basics: Skills for Being a Successful Online Student

Paul Alford 

Amy Lawson

2009

Diversifying and Improving Student-Instructor Communication

Richard w. Slatta

Jennifer Blossfeld

2007

Autonomous Distance Learning

Explaining the term autonomy by itself may be a little difficult as we often link it to “the ability to do certain task” or the “capacity to achieve a task”. However, Holec (1981) refers to the term autonomy as “taking responsibility for” or “ taking control of one’s own learning”. As we can notice, the key element in the definition is the idea that autonomy is an attribute of learners instead of a learning situation. In the other hand, writers associate autonomy with different levels in which students develop action, awareness, involvement, intervention, creation and transcendence which also involve content and process. Now, with the recent growth of distance learning, the necessity of encouraging autonomous learners has growth as well, mainly because autonomy plays a crucial role in distance education. To understand the importance of autonomous distance learning, it is important to take in consideration, the virtual environment, the teacher’s role and the main characteristics of an autonomous learner. 

When talking about virtual learning environment, we most take in acquaintance that distance education involves a high level of interaction between teacher and student, because interaction is essential for the learning process in a virtual environment in order to be successful. It is said that a good virtual learning environment allows both students and teachers to free themselves from the limitations of time, space and communication in a flexible way to take education to another level. Technology and internet had made this process  accessible and available at any place and any time, making communication and interaction a lot easier for students and teachers to get along with the educational process. Now, despite the important role of technology in distance learning, the success of all this programs is, of course, linked directly to the student and the teacher. for this is very important to know the different tools that virtual learning offers: 

- Communication: can be done by either mail, discussion board and chats, and it can be preformed one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many.

- Self assessment: which can be achieved by multiple choice tests that provide immediate feedback. 

- Delivery of learning resources and materials: this can involve images, videos, audios, links to another sites or resources.

- Shared groups areas: usually known as upload and share files with the purpose of communicate and share information with others. 

- Support for students: this tool could take a communication  form or it could be support material to help students. 

- Students tools: it could be individual web pages, drop boxes, electronic diaries, and calendars. 

With the evolution of distance education also come the changes in the system of teaching, mainly because “distance education revolves around a learner-centered system with teaching activity focused on facilitating learning”. Meaning that distance education is more focused in students autonomy and teachers facilitate the environment by providing explanations, references and reinforcements for the students but encouraging them to be independent rather then just transmuting information. It is important to mention that this does not mean that the teaching function is not becoming obsolete, it means that the role of the teacher is being transformed, turning the teacher into an intermediary between students and available resources. Helping students to recognize how technology can provide greater access to education by overcoming time and distance issues. In other words, the task of the teacher goes beyond merely grading students, it involves: 

-Diagnosing the student readiness to learn.

-Monitoring the student progress towards the objectives of the class. 

-Recognizing and discovering the students difficulties. 

-Stimulating and challenging students to go further and reach their goals. 

It is known that distance learning minimizes communication between teacher and student and at the same time it imposes a high degree of structure in order for learners to met their goals, and that is why students need to achieve some level of autonomy in order to be able to meet reach all the goals expected. 

To this point, it is necessary to mention the main characteristics of the autonomous student in distance education. It is said that autonomous students are centered-learning students that are viewed as independent with a high right to choose and the freedom to make decisions regarding their learning process, which empowers students to manage their time to study in an independent manner. Also, autonomous learners have the willing and have the capacity to manage and control what they need or have to learn, by knowing their own learning style and strategies, they are motivated to learn, they are usually considered as good guessers, they are also good at choosing materials, methods and tasks, organizing and caring out the chosen tasks and they pay special attention to the form and the content of the class. When students are aware of their potential and they incorporate it to their activities, that is the first step towards autonomous learning. However, sometimes being aware of their own potential is not enough to become an independent/autonomous student, because they also need to become more effective learners, and take responsibility for their own learning. They need to know when, why and how to use all those strategies they have developed in order to be able to choose the most appropriate regarding their needs. 

In conclusion, it is true that autonomous learning demands capable, responsible and independent students, but it takes more than that to reach a level of autonomy to become a successful autonomous learner. We must see it as a circle, in which effective education takes place when both, teacher and student work together, in order to achieve the goals required for the course. Also, the virtual environment plays an important role in distance education, since it is necessary to know all the tools that provides us so we can take advantage of them and use them in our benefit. As mentioned before, An autonomous learner, knows his weak and strong capacities and here is when distance education helps students to reach a different level of autonomy in order to succeed not only in education, but in life itself. 

*Autonomy in language teaching and learning

Phil Benson

Hong Kong Institute of education 

2001

*Helping students become Autonomous Learners: can technology help? 

Rubena St. Louis

Universidad Simón Bolívar 

2003

*Distance Learning: The Role of the Teacher in a Virtual Learning Environment

Ofra Nir-Gal 

2002

*Virtual learning environment

Ros O'Leary

Association for learning technology

*The American Journal of Distance Education,

Michael Beaudoin 

1990