ARTICLE REVIEWS

E-Portfolio Item #4: Scholarly Article Reviews

Kelly Gleeson
Regent University

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Article 1:
Priorities in K-12 Distance Education: A Delphi Study Examining Multiple Perspectives
on Policy, Practice, and Research by Kerry Rice is an article about the important factors that
helps distance learning to succeed. Instead of comparing distance education to face-to-face
education, it focuses on distance learning and how to improve it. It identifies the priority areas
that should be focused on in order to raise distance learnings effectiveness: evaluation of course
design and delivery, best practice, accountability, access, online learning/learners, professional
development, accreditation/standards, funding, and technology (Rice).
This article is a great read for pre-service teachers and people in the field because of its
content. Unlike many other articles that compare types of learning or bashing distance education,
it focuses on ways to improve it. We live in a world driven by technology, whether people
believe it to be for the better or not. We need to embrace it and focus on ways to improve it.
Distance learning provides opportunities that could not even be thought of just twenty years ago.
It is growing rapidly, and we need to be aware of the ways to improve it.
As a future teacher, I have to be aware of the benefits of distance learning and what needs
to be focused on. Because of its rapid growth, distance education may be super prevalent in our
near future. Distance learning may be integrated into our classrooms for students who are unable
to go to school due to health issues or other reasons. We need to be prepared for our technologydriven future.
Everybody Is Their Own Island: Teacher Disconnection in a Virtual School is about
the sad reality of disconnection felt between teachers and their students in online classrooms.
Many of the online teachers that were interviewed explained the difficulties of trying to make
connections with both their colleagues and students. A major issue discussed in this article is

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lack of responsiveness (Hawkins). Because teachers and students are not face-to-face in online
classrooms, it is very difficult to get to know your students on a personal level if they do not
respond. Online teachers are very limited in how to contact their students, so its very easy to be
disconnected unless the students make an effort.
This article makes great points such as teaching isnt just teaching a subject, but its
teaching the students and helping them through their stress of daily life and teaching them
compassion (Hawkins). If we ever find ourselves as online teachers, we have to realize that
connecting with our students is going to be a lot harder than with face-to-face learning. We must
make more of an effort and put ourselves out there. We have to let our students know that we
care by telling them, emailing them, calling them; communication is key.
Kennedy and Archambaults article Offering Preservice Teachers Field Experiences in
K-12 Online Learning: A National Survey of Teacher Education Programs is about a topic that I
previously gave little to no thought to. It is about preparing future teachers to teach online
courses. In a sense, it would be like doing an online student teaching experience. This is believed
to be important because teaching online requires a different skill set, not just technology
skills, but appropriate pedagogy (Kennedy).
Being a teacher of distance learning is more difficult than one may originally think. Other
than being super organized, technology savvy, and easily contactable, these teachers need other
skills. They need to learn the best techniques to teach subjects online. They need to be able to
create assignments that will teach what they want the students to learn without being face-to-face
with them. In order to create extraordinary online teachers, we need to implement pre-service
field experiences. I believe that most people learn best by doing, which is what a student
teaching opportunity for online courses would do.

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References
Hawkins, A., Barbour, M. K., & Graham, C. R. (2012, April 13). Everybody is their own
island: Teacher disconnection in a virtual school. The International Review of Research
in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(2), 123-144. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v13i2.967

Kennedy, K., & Archambault, L. (2012). Offering Preservice Teachers Field Experiences in K12 Online Learning: A National Survey of Teacher Education Programs. Journal of
Teacher Education, 63(3), 185-200. Retrieved from http://0jte.sagepub.com.library.regent.edu/content/63/3/185#cited-by

Rice, K. (2009). Priorities in K-12 distance education: A delphi study examining multiple
perspectives on policy, practice, and research. Educational Technology & Society, 12(3),
163-177.