by Asokan Anandarajan
ACMA, MBA, M.Phil, Ph.D., Professor of Accounting and Information Systems, New Jersey Institute of Technology, New Jersey, U.S.A.

It is indeed an honour that the Board of Trustees of the Rajapoopathy Memorial Glaucoma Centre Trust requested me to deliver the third memorial lecture of my beloved mother, Rajapoopathy Anandarajan. The inaugural and the second lectures were delivered by two great men of stature and experience in their respective fields; Mr. V. Murugesu, attorney at law, and Dr. P Sivasubramaniam FRCS, the consultant eye surgeon. To me it is not only an honour, but an emotional achievement to stand here in front you, a distinguished audience, with my mother’s portrait gazing at me. I feel choked with the fragrant memories of my mother who brought me into this world, cared for me, and sacrificed all comforts so I could reach a position in life which made the Trustees to invite me. To you, my darling mother, I owe everything. Learning was always very close to her heart, from the first day I inscribed the first alphabets on a slate with her hands holding and directing mine, and up to the time of my gaining the degrees I have behind my name.

In the prior lectures, Mr. Murugesu spoke on the topic, Unity of Religions, while Dr. Sivasubramaniam spoke on the topic of education. Education was a subject which had deep meaning for my mother, and, therefore, I have decided to use this opportunity to continue the theme raised by Dr. Sivasubramaniam by focusing on education in the twenty first century.

One of the major problems today is that skilled people such as Engineers, Accountants, Managers with MBAs among others cannot hold their jobs, especially in America. The reasons companies use is that they don’t have the skills needed to keep their jobs. Because technology is changing so fast, they are told that their skills are obsolete. This is one of the reasons used for what is euphemistically termed "downsizing". This rationalization, though it would appear unjust, is not wholly unreasonable. A person who qualified as a Electrical engineer say five years ago for example, may not have the skills to cope in today’s environment because technology has changed so fast. The fundamental question is, what can they do to get another equivalent job if they are the victims of downsizing? The answer appears obvious. They could go back to university or specialist teaching institutions and acquire the new skills needed. But, let us take a married man or woman with a family with commitments and responsibility. Taking time off from their busy schedules to attend evening classes may not be feasible. This means that in a traditional learning situation, because they cannot make time, they are deprived of getting a good education to improve their skills.

One solution to this is the concept of Distance Learning. In the West there is a general philosophy that education should be made available to anybody who wants it. Distance Learning is the offspring off that concept. The concept is quite simple. Stay at home and study and study at your own pace.

The objective of this Memorial speech is to:

1. Talk about the concept of Distance Learning.

2. How Distance Learning has changed education as we know it.

3. The advantages and disadvantages of obtaining an education via Distance Learning.

4. Conclude how this concept of Distance Learning can be useful to countries such as Sri Lanka.

Prior to introducing this topic I need to give definitions. Let us go back to basics.

What is learning?

Educational psychologist William Glasser claims that we learn:

• 10% of what we read

• 20% of what we hear

• 30% of what we see

• 50% of what we see and hear

• 70% of what we discuss with others

• 80% of what we experience

• 95% of what we teach someone else

You can make a case that all this is provided in a traditional class-room setting. You listen to the teacher, you see what they write on the blackboard, you discuss with other students, and you teach the weaker students. So, based on this, you can make a very strong case that the traditional class room setting provides a strong educational experience, which is lacking in a Distance Learning environment. If that is a criterion for learning, that is, learning by teaching, then this concept of Distance Learning is going to fail miserably. This is because in a Distance Learning environment, in many cases you may not see the teacher, and you certainly wont get a chance to interact with your fellow students. So Distance Learning as a medium of teaching will fail miserably if we use that criterion as a measure to evaluate the learning experience. These are issues that I will address as I proceed with the lecture.

What is Distance Learning? Verduin and Clark (1991) define Distance Learning as "any formal approach to learning in which a majority of the instruction occurs while educator and learner are at a distance from one another" . That is the key. The teacher and the learner don’t actually have to see each other.

There are two basic concepts in Distance Learning, namely:

• Separation of teacher and learner in time or place or both.

• Institutional accreditation: that is, learning is accredited or certified by some institution agency. That is the key.

This is not a problem that is inherent to Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, the Distance Learning degrees are conducted by the Open university. There is no problem of recognition since the intellectual and business communities in Sri Lanka recognize, without reservation, the quality of the degrees granted by the open university. However, this could be a problem in countries such as the United States where there are many universities and standards may not be consistent across these institutions of learning. The US has a body that is popularly referred to by its acronym, the AACSB. This body is responsible for evaluating the quality of the education provided by the different universities (criteria include examining the number of Ph.D faculty, the number and quality of their publications, among others). If the university passes the "standards" set by the AACSB it is given accreditation. The process of accreditation is quite time consuming, in some cases taking a period of two years, such is the intense scrutiny to which the institution is put. On average, only one-third of US universities have accreditation in their respective disciplines. With Distance learning (DL) programs in particular it is important that DL programs be granted by an accredited institution to be given validity. While DL programs are offered by many non-accredited institutions, the advantage of obtaining a DL degree from an accredited institution include a higher probability of recognition from potential employers when a candidate is searching for a job.

Now let me take you through a brief history lesson. Every great thought has a father. The father of Distance learning is Isaac Pitman, the person who invented shorthand. In 1840 Isaac Pitman introduced Distance learning by teaching short hand correspondence through "penny post". It did revolutionize learning because young ladies didn’t have to go to classes any more. They could stay at home and learn this skill at their own pace.

In 1858 the University of London established the external program. Subsequently, in 1863 in the USA, the Chautauqua Institute authorized by New York state decided to award degrees by correspondence. Distance learning spread to other universities in America and subsequently it evolved with the evolution of new technology. University of Iowa offered five radio courses for credit. The distance learning students could now follow the lectures on the radio. Homework and subsequent feedback from the lecturer was conducted through the post. In 1968 Stanford University became one of the first universities to offer distance learning courses by means of television. The university created the Stanford Instructional Television network. Students followed courses on specified television channels. The grading of homework and other assignments was conducted by means of the tradition postal service.

So, to summarize, what is referred to as traditional distance learning is and continues to be conducted through the following conduits:

By mail or correspondence education: (1850s)

The earliest known systems of distance education. This system of education is still in prevalence in most parts of the world and is still the principal and most used medium of distance learning.

Radio (1926 onwards)

This has by far been the most widely used and most effective media of basic and adult education. This is still used in many countries especially in the field of agriculture about fertilizers to be used for certain crops, effective use of pesticides, techniques for harvesting and so on.

Television (1938 onwards)

This came as an improvement over the radio as a media of education and gained wide popularity. Television broadcasts of adult educational programs, and science became a phenomenal success in the 1930s onwards. Nowadays, a number of educative programs are broadcast on TV featuring Science, Economics, Computers, Home Sciences, and a host of other subjects.

Interactive Video Conferencing (1990s onwards)

Another more recent method of traditional distance learning which has been popular for the last decade is referred to as Interactive video conferencing. Teaching by means of video conferencing is very close to traditional university teaching. You have a teacher making a lecture. The lecture is broadcast to students in other locations; they see the teacher on a large television screen placed in their respective class rooms. There may only be 30 students with the teacher but there could be hundreds of students in other locations listening. So, this enables a teacher to reach a much larger audience. Further, there are television cameras in the class rooms of the respective students. The teacher can see the students on television screens at the back of his or her class room. If these students ask a question, the teacher can see them on his (her) television screen and can respond.

So, that is the concept of Distance Learning. But, I really need to differentiate between DL and Electronic Distance learning (E-distance learning) which is the focus of this talk. E-distance learning simply means distance learning on Internet time. In effect, E-learning is a new approach to Distance learning that uses the Worldwide Web, the internet as an important component of the teaching process. The key concepts are the following:

• Virtual classroom
• White Board

The way this works is you log on to the Internet and enter the class room site. (The class room is not a real class room, but a website on the Internet and hence is referred to as a virtual class room). You enter the password that you are given by the school. Once you enter the class room you see a series of icons. For example if you click on the syllabus you will be given details of what is expected. If you click on the lectures you will be able to listen to a professor’s lectures. The beauty is that most have little video clips and that enhances learning. You have graphics, three dimensional images and so on. If you want to ask questions you click on to the discussion icon and type in the question. When the discussion icon is "clicked" one sees on the computer screen what appears to be a blackboard, but white in colour. This is popularly referred to as the White Board. The question raised is accessible to all other students of the class who "click" on the discussion icon and view the white board. If other students want to join in, they respond, so you get their feedback and the teacher responds making his or her comments. So you get your questions answered and also benefit from others’ view points. This may actually stimulate discussion and it is a learning experience since everybody benefits from a frank and open discussion on the issues covered in the chapter. In general the student uses a local computer (usually from home) to access a range of services and facilities.

This assumes that everyone has access to the Internet. You can make a very strong case that this is only applicable in the West. What happens in a situation where the access to the Internet is not freely available because of lack of basic facilities or infrastructure or because of cost constraints (too expensive to spend a long time on the Internet)? While students in the West have access to education 24 hours a week, seven days a week, this may not be feasible in countries such as Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka especially, there are technological limitations in terms of the band-width used which could result in slower response time. Further, this method of education could be relatively costly since the user would be expected to pay telephone charges and for internet usage based on time. The process of learning on the Internet could be quite costly. In such a scenario, the saviour is the use of CD-Roms. Everything I talked about which was on the Web is available on CD-Roms. If you insert it in the computer you can get the lectures, the video clips, pictures, graphs everything right there. The only thing missing would be class interaction using the white board which I talked about earlier.
(Contd. on next week)