RESEARCH PAPER TEMPLATE

North American University

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

Date: 06/15/2016

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

1. LITERATURE REVIEW:
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

Brief Literature Review:

Advantages:
The main difference between online and onsite classes is that, teachers and
students are not worrying about the time and place arrangements and they can
communicate through online tools to communicate. It minimizes the opportunity
gaps among students, provides independency/autonomy for the learners.
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 (Horzum,
2003).
Online courses, helps people to learn independently and does not force learners
to spend all time in the classroom or school. Responsibilities are mostly placed
on students shoulders and learners can contact each other many times.
Distance education allows a lot of tools to be used in the learning process.
Students can use variety of online tools in order to improve their skills. The tools

provide opportunities to heighten project based learning, as well as engage and

motivate learners. Distance education can include the tools such as email, Chat
rooms, web casts, video and calendars etc. Teachers can post their class
assignments such as tests, quizzes, home works, reviews and resource links on
their websites.
Distance learning allows mobile devices to be used during the learning process.
Mobile devices provide quick and easy communications between learners and
instructors. Since most of the students have smartphones, they can download
the applications and share or upload documents, videos, pictures etc. through
their phones.
The Open University has made increasing use of computer-based support and
conferencing links that are now commonly employed in distance learning
modules (Price et al., 2007; Richardson, 2009; Thorpe, 2008).
Disadvantages
Distance learning rely on internet connection and can cause technical issues and
miscommunication between people.
Distance learning is not easy as face to face communicating. It places most of
the works on students shoulders.
Distance learning require extra time to understand and being familiar with the
components of the online tools such as online chat, participating webinars,
submitting assignment, creating online projects etc.
Human factors is one of the important missing concept in distance learning.
Professors attractiveness has a significant impact on students learning,
motivation and satisfaction.
Past research indicates that students gave attractive professors higher course
ratings and expressed higher course satisfaction (Felton, Mitchell, & Stinson,
2004; Liu, Hu, & Furutan, 2013).
Advancing technologies have not fully responded to the difficulties experiences
by students. These problems can exist beyond the online conferencing programs
because of inequalities in students access to equipment (Albion et al.,2010;
Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2011).
Online education is a different medium for teaching and learning, and therefore
requires a different pedagogy (Bernard et al., 2004).
There are often difficulties with transactional distance in online provision
because of the absence of paralinguistic information and these can be
exacerbated if tutors do not receive adequate training (Albion et al., 2010; Price
et al, 2007).

There are lots of scientific studies on the attitudes and beliefs of both learners
and teachers towards distance education abroad. Dick, Case and Burns (2001)
have explored the attitudes of graduates and undergraduates (n=270) towards
distance education in the USA and Australia. According to the data, it was
cleared that the attitudes of learners are so close to instable and they take
distance education as a second preference (Ates and Altun, 2008).

2. REFLECTION:

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:
I mostly agree with the researches and I also think that distance learning made a
huge impact on education and its obvious that its positive effects are much
greater than negative effects.
First of all, distance learning is cheaper, does not require to be present in the
classroom and the resources are available almost 24/7. You can reach a lot of
resources at once in a short time period. You do not necessarily need the teacher
supervision and learn mostly with your own efforts, therefore the information can
stay in your memory for a longer time period.
Different institutions have different types of distance learning components,
therefore distance learning can help you to learn different type of online tools. For
instance I learned some programs such as Camtasia, We video, google slides,
creating your own website, video converter programs etc. By using this programs
you can create variety of projects, animations, digital stories which are very
useful to have in your daily life.
I also agree with the disadvantages of the distance learning that are stated in the
researches. I think technical issues will be one of the main disadvantage of the
online learning. I also witnessed one of my student had to withdraw from one of
her online courses because of a technical issue on her blackboard account and
she missed multiple assignments deadline until it resolved.
Another disadvantage of the distance learning that I realized is the human factor
and I think this is also an important disadvantages of the distance learning. I do
agree that instructors attractiveness have a significant effect on students
learning.

The research was very beneficial for me and I did get chance to look at the
distance learning from different perspective. I am a chemistry teacher and I will
definitely use some of the online tools and create my own teaching website and
share it with my students. The students also needs to learn about technological
changes and new implementations, methods in education.

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:

- Cosar, M. m. (2015). Perspectives of Foreign Students Towards Distance

Education. International journal on new trends in education & their implications
(IJONTE), 6(3), 186-193.
-Stear, S. s., & Mensch, S. S. (2012). Online Learning Tools for Distant
Education. Global education journal, 2012(3), 57-64.
- Liu, J., & Tomasi, S. D. (2015). The Effect of Professor's Attractiveness on
Distance Learning Students. Journal of educators online, 12(2), 142-165.
-Mannay, D. m., & Wilcock, C. (2015). What Students Want? Exploring the
Role of the Institution in Supporting Successful Learning Journeys in
Online Distance Education. Widening Participation & Lifelong Learning, 17(1),
49-63. doi:10.5456/WPLL.17.1.49
- Kentnor, H. E. (2015). Distance Education and The Evaluation of Online
Learning in The United States. Curriculum & teaching dialogue, 17(1/2),
(Sp)21-(Sp)34.