RESEARCH PAPER TEMPLATE

North American University

Education Department
M.Ed. in EDLE & CUIN
EDUC 5324: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY INTO EDUCATION

Name:_Nandita Kothari_______ Date: _11/24/2019________________

Topic Selected:
Topic 3: What does the research say about advantages and disadvantages of distance
education?

1. LITERATURE REVIEW: (250 Words)

What does the literature/research say about this issue/topic? By using NAU
Library or Online Search engines, conduct a literature review.
• You need to include 5 different sources (book, journal article, web article
etc.) in your review. Try to use current sources as much as possible.
• You need to summarize and synthesize your sources by discussing a
common theme or issue.
• You don't need to critique your sources
• You don't need to evaluate your sources (if the sources are trustworthy,
weather the author has a bias or not)
• You need to provide background information such as history and
definitions

Literature Review:

The common theme on all these peer reviewed journal articles and web articles is
the advantages and disadvantages of distance education. Distance education is
an educational process that has got a history dating back to the time when the
need for education increased and, on the other hand, the expenses appeared as
inevitable necessity that should be decreased (Kireev, 2016). The distance
education has been in existence since early 1950s when education was through
slow mail and correspondence courses. However with the internet coming in 2000s
and the speed of internet improving in 2010s, distance education has increase
many fold and now more than 50% of the education is given through distance
education.
The most determining difference between distance and face-to-face education is
that the learners and teachers could collaborate without any time and place
limitations. The missions of distance education can be mentioned as the follows:
a) it enables all individuals to benefit from educational facilities for their lifelong, b)
it contributes to the education of individuals and society, c) it reaches educational
facilities to the large masses via the technological mediums without any borders,
d) it provides leveling the playing fields in education for everyone and decreases
the high expenses of traditional educational models (Cosur, 2015).
The growing interest in distance education technologies bring together a critical
question on whether online and distance learning is as effective as face-to-face
learning. This skepticism requires employing best approaches and robust
instruments to evaluate online and distance education (Lowenthal & Davidson-
Shivers, 2019). Researchers and instructional designers examine learning process
in distance education for building better online learning experiences. To ensure the
quality of distance education, institutions basically emphasis on well-designed
course, effective technologies, online instructors with high competence, and
effective learning outcomes. What is important at this point is to evaluate efficacy
of distance education using robust and valid instruments, scales and
measurements. In this respect, the book titled Measurements in distance
education: A Compendium of instruments, scales, and measures for evaluating
online learning by Catalano (2019) has set out to provide a large manual including
more than fifty instruments, scales and questionnaire with useful description on
their psychometric properties. This compendium is a very good source to measure
the effectiveness of distance education while evaluating the advantages and
disadvantages of distance education.

2. REFLECTION: (250 Words)

• What is your personal opinion on this issue? Do you agree with the
research? If you agree or disagree, please explain why?
• Provide examples/experiences regarding this issue from school
perspective or If you are not working in a school, from your profession. Be
specific with your examples. You can mention software/hardware names,
specific methods that you plan to use, etc.
• How would you implement this research in your career? (At least 1
paragraph)

Reflection:
In my opinion, blended learning of classroom instruction along with a combination
of distance education is the most effective and cost efficient way of learning in
today’s world. According to Cosar (2015) research, 71.9% of the students agreed
that blended learning can be more efficient instead of separate courses in both
face-to-face and on-line over distance education system. Accordingly, they
demanded to take blended learning because many reasons such as
understandability of the courses, absence of interactions with their peers, having
no course materials in their mother tongues, despite the fact that they got familiarity
with information technologies and adequate competences in using computer
technologies. I totally agree with this research findings as I have also faced similar
issues in my experience of teaching students in distance learning during my
teaching career of last 10 years. The absence of interaction with both the professor
and the peers is the most important aspect of the ineffectiveness of a pure distance
education.
From my school perspective, we use Canvas and ClassDojo for distance education
to our school children. This was not very effective when we introduced it 4 years
back in our school. However, when we started conducting one days training
sessions and added the interactive chat mode, this software and web-based
distance learning applications became much more effective. This proves the
research finding that blended learning of classroom instruction along with
combination of distance education if very effective.
In my career, I would implement the recommendation of Cosar from his 2015
research and do the following:
a) students can participate in face-to-face discussions between groups
to contribute their understanding the courses and interacting with
others.
b) I will prepare course material in foreign language also (example
Turkish or Spanish) which will help better understanding of non-
English speaking students.
c) I will support course content with auditory (like audio conference) or
visual (webinar and power point) material to create positive effects
on the student’s level of understanding and learning the courses.
d) I will take student feedback at the end of the course and bring
improvement in the next year’s course based on that feedback.

3. REFERENCES:
• Cite at least 5 References in APA.
• You may use http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-journal for citing
your sources in APA style.

References:

Sources:
Catalano,A. (2019). Measurement in distance education. Turkish Online Journal
of Distance Education, 20 (4), 200-203.
Cosar,M. (2015). Perspectives of foreign students towards distance education.
International Journal on New Trends in Education and Their Implications, 6
(3),186-193.
Kireev, B.N. (2016). The use of e-learning in Training Educational Graduates.
Higher Education in Russia, 2, 148-153.
Kireev, B.N. (2015). The use of multimedia technologies in the study of engineering
disciplines. Interdisciplinary Behavior and Social Sciences, Edited by Ford Lumban
Gaol, CRC Press, 121-124.
Kireev, B.,Zhundibayeva, A.,& Aktanova, A. (2019). Distance learning at higher
education institutions: Results of an experiment. Journal of Social Studies
Education Research, 10 (3), 387-403.
Kudlaev, M.S. (2018). The process of digitalization of education in Russia. A young
scientist, 31. 3-7.