The second edition of “Distance Education for Teacher Training: Modes, Models and Methods” from the Education Development Center is a standard reference for those working on bilateral and multilateral donor-funded educational initiatives. It links the promise of next distance technologies with the lessons learned from COVID-19.
What This Handbook on Distance Education’s Future Has to Offer
It Condenses The Body of Evidence
With both text and graphics summarizing the findings, this guide offers an overview of common technologies used for remote education, including internet and mobile technologies, multimedia (including virtual reality, mixed reality, and augmented reality), audio, video, and television. It integrates the knowledge gained over the past ten years, especially from the global transition to online education amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This guide provides the most comprehensive, international, and current information on the most useful eLearning inputs, based on data from 188 nations and about 700 publications. We’ll talk more about that later.
It Provides a List of Beneficial eLearning Tools, Resources, and Experts
Links to a variety of standards (for online coaching, online instruction, online course design, and content development) and online resources, such as checklists for course design, instructional design frameworks, scenario builders, protocols, assessment tools, quality assurance checklists, quick guides, and lists of dos and don’ts, are included in this guide. Chapters 11, 12, and 17 of the eLearning courses might be most helpful to people who develop or are just starting out in the field. Lists of (mainly free) digital tools, ranging from Twine and H5P to Supermeme and Vyond, can be found here.
The book offers links to useful eLearning organizations and businesses in addition to tools and resources, like Articulate360, the International Society of Technology in Education, open institutions worldwide, and the eLearning Industry, of course! It provides links to basic online platforms-cum-tools like Choiceboards and HyperDocs, as well as repositories of free and inexpensive technology tools like OER Commons. Additionally, it provides links to some of my favorite eLearning experts, such as Cathy Moore, Jodi Sansone (who creates stunning and rich Storyline designs), Nicole Zumpano, and Torrey Trust (whose amazing ChatGPT resources are useful for any career), as well as to Arjana Blazic’s charming Choiceboards and Denise-Henry Orndorff’s fantastic periodic table of Chrome extensions (yes, you will need to read the guide to find these).
It Offers Guidance on Producing Excellent eLearning Courses
The guide’s “how to” section is Section II, whereas Section I thoroughly reviews the research on various technologies. In order to guarantee that online learning actually produces meaningful learning and quantifiable results, you will find here useful guidance on instruction, instructional design, content development, preparing online instructors and learners, supporting online learners, assessment, evaluating eLearning, assuring quality, and choosing the right technologies. Additionally, the guide is divided into chapters so that you can read about your areas of interest alone—perfect for those of us who would prefer to read 280 characters rather than 280 pages!
It includes several models of projects and activities related to distance education.
Our institution, educational system, the public and private sectors, and donor-funded online, mobile, video-based, and multimedia-based projects, initiatives, and programs are the best places to learn about eLearning. Virtual coaching in Indonesia, digital learning games and Extended Reality for preservice teachers in the US, augmented reality in Portugal, mobile learning in the Caribbean, online courses for refugees in Germany, and audio instruction in sub-Saharan Africa are just a few of the exciting worldwide developments. These models and examples are only a few of the ones covered in this handbook.
It Links Online Learning’s Past and Present.
In order to fully grasp the possibilities of distant learning, this handbook connects us to its history while looking forward. For instance, the “Foreword” cites my mother’s correspondence course from the 1930s, when she was pursuing a Pittman shorthand credential. For her, this degree served as a springboard to a middle-class lifestyle. Although distance learning has changed since 1939, its advantages haven’t changed.
