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