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Over the past decade, "distance education" has become an accepted instructional environment for learners of all ages. By definition, distance education occurs when the learner and the delivery of the instruction are not located in the same place. The child watching Arthur in the playroom is a "distance learner," as are the high school student researching DNA testing on the Frontline website, the homeowner planning kitchen remodeling with the New Yankee Workshop, or the family traveling to exotic places on the Living Edens. Traditionally, adults have studied within formal education settings much like those they grew up within. Maybe the college campus or technical school had less structure, fewer rules of conduct and larger enrollments, but otherwise, the adult who needed to learn a skill or study information went to a "school" full of classrooms, desks, and learning labs. Today, your television screen can be your personal college campus, providing a window to worlds that you may never have the opportunity to visit. Television can spotlight a foreign culture, travel back to a time in history, look inside the human body, let you walk through the pages of someone else's life. Today, the adult learner can work on a college degree, study to meet licensure or certification requirements for a job, or even study for the love of learning, and never leave the comforts of home. Telecourses like those produced through the Annenberg [www.learner.org] project have been broadcast on Channel 5 almost from the time the station signed on the air in 1984. For the past decade Channel 5 and Truckee Meadows Community College have collaborated to offer telecourses for TMCC credit. Now we take the distance learning experience all the way: the student can earn a TMCC Associate Degree in General Studies through Going the Distance, a collaboration of the college and Channel 5. Using the telecourses broadcast on Channel 5 as basic curriculum, TMCC instructors develop a website from which to offer additional instruction and student/teacher interactivity. Students are required to enroll in the Going the Distance telecourses using the same system as the campus students, in person, by phone, or on the web at www.tmcc.edu. Telecourses listed as Going the Distance in the spring 2001 catalog include the World of Music, Abnormal Psychology, and Principles of Sociology. Going the Distance combines scheduling flexibility to accommodate adult lifestyles with the power of television to teach. The visual experience is recognized as the most common learning style, thus television is a natural educator. Like other educational resources, video should be used wisely and efficiently to maximize learning. With the help of your VCR and its remote control, you can customize your video learning experience to fit your own learning style. Click HERE to review the ten tips for making the most of television for learning. past issues by Pat
Miller patm@knpb.org
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