Planning distance education

PLANNING DISTANCE EDUCATION

During the last 10 years, studies and publications about distance education and the use of TICs in its teaching and learning processes has grown a lot. Undoubtedly,these technologies are changing our ways of communication with others and as a result of that, education has not been aware of this situation. Distance education has been around for years and has changeddue to the technological advances, for example in Colombia, 30 or more years ago, people could access to education through radio or correspondence courses. “Bachillerato por radio” was developed as aprogram for people, who live in rural or isolated areas or were old, to have the opportunity to study high school, whereas correspondence courses were design for informal education accessible toanyone.
Distance education implies that the learner and the teacher or instructor are separated, not only in distance, but also in time, although nowadays this separation in time is less, thanks tovirtual education in which the use of technology plays an important role. According to Schamber (1988), although technology is an integral part of distance education, any successful program must focus onthe instructional needs of the students, rather than on the technology itself because it is necessary to consider their ages, interests and experiences, educational levels, cultural andsocioeconomic backgrounds, and familiarity with distance education methods and delivery systems.
In planning distance education, it is important to take into account the goals, needs, and characteristics ofteachers and students, as well as content requirements and technical constraints that this process could present, which implies a systematic design and development of it. As Willis (1992) proposes, theinstructional development process for distance education consists of the traditional stages of design, development, evaluation and revision. This revision is seen as an ongoing process due to the...