Simulation and Distance Learning
What is distance learning? What is the role of simulation in distance learning?
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To be sure we're on the same page, let's refer to the book by Lynette Porter. In her opening paragraph of Chapter 1, Porter says:
... Whether it's called distance learning, directed learning, assisted learning, distance education, or some other name, there is an obvious answer to the question, What is distance learning? It is educational or training information, including the instruction and experience that learners gain, although they are physically distant from the source of that information.
In practice, however, distance learning can ... involve the use of new technologies, innovative materials, and interactive instructional methods ... reach people of all ages and abilities who might otherwise find it difficult to further their education or get the training they need. [and].help learners realize the importance of life-long education, whether for personal interest or career preparation and enhancement.
Distance learning breaks the direct instructor/student contact but provides indirect contacts using different technologies. It interposes a publication or program between instructor and audience -- something as simple as a mailed letter or as complex as a computer or broadcast display system. In either case, it is designed for the subject matter, the audience, and the learning situation.
Types of distance learning include:
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Computer Learning
The use of computers for education and training has increased dramatically, due mainly to the computer's greatly improved processing, storage, and display capability, together with their floppy-disc and CD-ROM drives. With the advent of the Internet and many organizational intranets, the potential for education and training has increased even more dramatically.
Standalone Computers
Relatively inexpensive desktop computers, using high density floppy discs and CD-ROM's, made it possible for individuals to learn from home correspondence courses on their own, standalone computers.
Provided with CD-based assignments, interactive practice with feedback, and supplementary audiovisual materials, learners can pace themselves.
Networks of Computers
Learning with the aid of diskettes on standalone computers has an advantage over online training in not being tied to a modem. Also, high bandwidth storage elements like CD-ROM's make it possible to provide real-time multimedia to facilitate learning. But learning is disadvantaged by the longer updating time needed between successive program versions of the materials.
By contrast, updated network materials are available as soon as program changes are made. In other words, the Web offers faster distribution of materials. This requires continued development and maintenance of the site. But the increased flexibility adds to the learning utility of the Web. On the other hand, transmission of high-density material like motion picture clips is still too slow to be effective in training, though it is improving at a rapid rate.
As with standalone systems, Internet-based learning has limited interaction between teachers and students. But the use of hyperlinks to connect related material and clarify ideas helps to make up for the deficit.
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The Web's impact is felt in the way we conduct our classrooms. But challenges still remain, because:
Another problem with distance training is the matter of testing students and evaluating training systems. Since there is no face-to-face with the student, how can we tell what is happening?
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Interactive practice is more than a way of providing information to the student. It provides a way to learn to respond to new situations. But there are degrees of interaction.
At the lowest level, you might interact by calling up particular files (programs), much as one can switch to different channels of television. But this is hardly what we would consider a significant part of the learning process. It is much more in the nature of finding your way to the classroom.
Beyond channel switching, we could react emotionally or thoughtfully to text or graphics presented on the screen. A paragraph or picture might possibly trigger a new idea that catches your attention. You might discuss the thoughts with others, using e-mail, say, and in this way learn something about the material.
But even this isn't strictly an interaction with the material on the page. The changes only go one way. For a relationship to be interactive, actions have to generate responses -- when I react in some way in a situation, I expect a reaction, in turn. I might get a question, for example. And if I were to answer the question, I would expect another response. The reaction might come in the form of feedback. It could tell me that, say, I answered the question incorrectly, or that I should now answer the next question, or some such thing.
But even these responses aren't fully interactive -- they aren't up to normal experience. For one thing, they aren't completely free reactions, as one might expect to occur in a free exchange between people. The action-reaction situation is pre-packaged and generally very limiting. The logic of the procedure dictates what the learning system will do, based on the classes of things the learner does. More importantly, the content remains unchanged; it isn't altered by the actions of the learner.
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The level of interaction can be raised by using simulation to represent settings in which interaction occurs. Simulation would let learners respond to organized clusters of information normally found in real life, and would be modifiable (subject to changes in its information content) to accommodate the learner's effects on it.
As an added bonus, simulation allows both feedback and simultaneous actions.
For more details, see Simulations for Skills Training.
Depending on the quality of the make-believe, simulation brings the potential for interaction closer to the kind of interaction we find in our behavioral circumstances. Typical examples of skills that might be performed in their respective environments are:
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A convenient way has to be found to synthesize the real setting in which the action occurs -- to represent it realistically and usefully, as a virtual reality. For example, see my personalized simulations for tennis studies.
Here the normal procedure is to devise rules of action and equations of state to depict events. The rules are expressed as If...then statements identifying the conditions for the action, and the equations define the actions as a function of time. This approach can be complex, but the computer makes the procedure possible and meaningful.
Simulation works to full advantage when the equations are formulated to spell out step by step what occurs in the skills situation. The computer can grind out the behavior as it develops in time and present it on a screen for viewing, as a movie. The student becomes an active participant in the situation, and with his or her own decisions affects what occurs. The effects are reflected on the screen. The product is thus an interactive movie.
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