Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda.
I chose this reading because the scope with which authors Anderson and Zawacki-Richter addressed the online distance education provides an accessible perspective, organising their study in three levels of research that allowed me to parallel my case study as follows: Macro-level, to consider related systems and theories that in the case study correspond to the global strategy of an international corporation; Meso-level, in which they include pertinent aspects of management, organisation, and technology that for the case study represent a nation-wide project for a single country; and Micro-level, to focus in what learning and teaching in distance education environments involve, as well as contributing to the success of the project implementation of the case study. Furthermore, the chapters that build up the levels contain the work of one or more experts on specific matters providing a collection of knowledgeable information upon which to support a wide variety of future research studies.
In chapter 4, Online Distance Education Models and Research Implications, the invited experts Evans and Haughey refer to Distance Education as a form of education that is based on the objective of providing education to people unable to obtaining it at schools. The individual cases varied from geographical location, to family and work commitments, to cost factors, as well as non personal issues like not enough institutions, or full-time funding, or insufficient staff (Anderson & Zawachi-Richter, 2014). For the case study I am preparing the situation can be somewhat different although the education through the distance still occurs.
Distance education happens within larger socio-economic and political contexts, which are not only reflective of societal characteristics as those Keegan (as cited by Anderson & Zawachi-Richter, 2014) identified: immediacy, globalization, privatization, and industrialization. The authors add professional learning to these, and in my case study I must add the happenstance created by the technological drive of the CEO of the company, as well as the features of a Human Resources project. Distance education was a consequence instead of the focus since the project consisted in the nation-wide implementation of a new system replacing all previous means used in processing the payroll, including an innovative way for the personnel’s physical and electronic access to their payslip.
References
Anderson, T., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (Eds.). (2014). Online distance education : Towards a research agenda (Issues in distance education series). Edmonton, AB: AU Press, Athabasca University.