dun... Dun... Dun... DA DUMM!! (?)

Dramatic, I know. Please imagine "Sprach Zarathustra" playing in the background.

The only experience I've had with distance education is one ICN (Iowa Communications Network) class I took while in high school. It was Psychology 101 offered by a community college in a town about 45 minutes away, and only upperclassmen or designated TAG (Talented and Gifted) students could take it for college credit for free. I took the class as a TAG sophomore, and I was pumped. I was excited at the prospect of learning something not ordinarily taught at my high school and taking my first baby steps toward the new frontier of college. The first time I sat down with the rest of my class, and I stared at the TV screen, waiting for new wisdom to be imparted to me, I felt remarkably like those monkeys at "The Dawn of Man." Because this ICN class would bring me knowledge otherwise locked away from me, this would fit into the pro-distance learning stance.



However, this is basically what my ICN classroom looked like. Those dorky things sitting in front of those grinning people are the microphones, so if you had a question, or just wanted the camera to automatically zoom in on you, you press that big clunky button down and talk. Hopefully the teacher, who is teaching to his own classroom and at least two other satellite locations, will notice you. When class actually started happening, I felt more than a little tricked. I was one of at least 60 total people taking the class. And the technology was the kind of thing our local sheriff and sweater-vested school board members were excited about, but the students were all painfully aware of how outdated it was. The clunky technology, overenthusiasm of the administration and huge class size fits right in with the anti-distance learning camp.



Basically, this was not a good class (thank god it was free). Actually, I never even transferred the credit, preferring to retake Psych 101 at my undergrad rather than count on whatever I might have recalled from that class. Ultimately, it was a failure - the kind of class where you learn more from reading the book than showing up ever would get you. But it didn't have to be that way. Had the class sizes been smaller and had the teacher cared even a little bit about doing more than marking up our tests, things might have gone differently. I suppose it was less a failure of "distance learning" than it was a missed opportunity.

With my Psych 101 class, I was initially excited because this technology would bring me new material to learn, and then after the class had started, I realized that how our technology was set up was hindering the class experience. While I walked out of the class with an A, and helping more than a few of my classmates along the way, I left dissatisfied that I hadn't learned more. I'm still unhappy about that, but the third perspective in Webb Peterson's article would have warned me against being blinded either for or against technology. I suppose with one lesson learned, I try to stay on this third side of the distance-learning debate. While my own experience wasn't very positive, I see so much room for improvement that I can't discredit it altogether.