Swiss Information – Tourism & Products

Swiss Quality Distance Learning

Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education, 5^th Edition,  was awarded the 2011 Association for Educational Communications and Technology: Division of Distance Learning Distance Education Book Award !

Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education, Fifth Edition, provides it is readers with the most comprehensive coverage on the market today of selective information regarding distance education in the 21st century. Primarily written for pre-service teachers, corporate trainers, and staff development programs that talk about instructing distant learners or managing distance education systems. Readers will be better equipped with the cognition and capacity to select suitable systems for instructing the distant learner and how to utilise this new cognition in a distance learning program, so essential to today's instructional culture.

Five over-arching themes aid the text: 1) defining distance education, 2) the importance of exploration development, 3) distance learning is a viable and more and more indispensable substitute for instructing and learning, 4) equivalency theory, and 5) the book will have to be comprehensive–which means it will have to cover as much as is possible of the respective ways instruction is made available to distant learners.

Significantly revised and updated, the fifth edition now includes these remarkable new features and more: chapter goals and objectives, chapter discussion questions, a look at best exercise issues, new schemes and techniques, over thirty-percent new resources and references, and a more inviolable special importance and significance on how to design, deliver, and valuate online instruction.

From the Back Cover

Unique in it is wide coverage of the respective technologies that may be applied for the deliverance of distance education, the fifth edition of Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education provide the fundamental principle you need to become a welleducated distance educator or manager of distance education systems:

• Part I cover the theory and exploration that inform distance learning,
• Part II addresses practical achievements and cognition necessitated to function without delay in a distance learning environment, and
• Part III explores managerial and administrative issues that arise in distance learning environments.

Know for it is definition of education for the field, exploration base, advocacy for distance ed as a viable and growingly necessary substitute for instructing and learning, coverage of equivalency theory, and comprehensive coverage of the modes of distance learning, this exhaustively revised edition reflects the following changes:

New to This Edition:

• A streamline edition containing 12 chapters (instead of 13) with the Internet-based distance education content integrated throughout.
• Dozens of new visuals have been added to clarify ideas and explain procedures.
• Additional data with regards to the virtual schooling movement.
• Major revision of Chapter 3 (Research and Distance Education) to update what is known when it comes to the best exercises in DE.
• Stronger special and significant stress in this edition is placed on how to design, deliver, and evaluate online instructions, supported by the latest research.
• All new end-of-chapter discussion questions are designed for instructors to post as a get started for threaded discussions and for students to focus on key ideas.
• As distance education has grown into a mainstream instructing and learning approach, a heap of new schemes are included in this edition to help the learner, teacher, and manager comprehend the affect of new ideas, such as open source course management systems.
• Over 30% of the resources and references included in this edition of Teaching and Learning at a Distance are new.

About the Author

Michael Simonson is a program professor at Nova Southeastern University in the Instructional Technology and Distance Education program. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in Instructional Systems. He works with schools, organizations, and corporations to aid them to comprise instructional engineering science and distance education into instructing and training, and on the development of virtual schools. Simonson has authored four major textbooks dealing with distance education, instructional technology, instructional computing, and instructional media. Mike has over 150 scholarly publications, and in excess of 200 professional demonstrations dealing with distance education and instructional technology. Simonson has significant experience working with domestic and global businesses and industries, specially on projects related to instructional technology, virtual schools, and distance education. Technology planning, distance education/virtual school policy development and effective design of online instruction are current projects. He is editor of the Quarterly Review of Distance Education, Distance Learning Journal, and Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers staged at the Annual Conventions of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. He has won the award for most outstanding exploration in the field of distance education staged by the United States Distance Learning Association. Most not long back he has been an external evaluator South Dakota’s Connecting the Schools and Digital Dakota Network projects, and is a consultant for the U.S. Army Research Institute. Simonson was honorably discharged as a Captain from the United States Marine Corps (R).

Most helpful client reviews

23 of 24 humans found the following review helpful.
Distance Education Fieldbook
By Prof David T Wright
Of outstanding value to students, educators, managers as well as developers of the engineering science and learning fundamental interaction channels.

Thorough, sparsely illustrated chapters span:
- foundations and history, including correspondence
- exploration & distance education
- technologies- taxonomy, live video, classrooms
- copyright
- instructional design- process, planning, issues, models
- student- leaner responsibilities
- teaching- role, policy
- handouts, study guides, visuals
- WWW
- assessment tools (of students)
- assessing instructing success

Overall, a finish and vendor-neutral, balanced view of the field. Perhaps of greatest use to students contemplating signing up for a course and their future professors. Check analysts like Gartner, IDC and others for the business & market dynamic distinct elements surrounding the actual learning interaction.

11 of 13 humans found the following review helpful.
A good introduction
By Rick Mathews
I use this book as my text in The Foundations of Distance Education and Training course I instruct at the University of Phoenix. It has lately been modified and in the past 4 years of instructing this class, not a single student has complained when it comes to the book (somewhat unusual).

3 of 3 persons found the following review helpful.
Poorly written and gravely out of date
By Helen Keier
I wish this text hadn't been chosen for my Foundations of Distance Education course (MS.Ed. program). It may have a 2012 copyright, but it's speedily evident that while the copyright has been updated, the content has not been. I know technology is ever changing, but the engineering science covered in the book is out of date to the point of irrelevancy. I likewise didn't care for the conversational style employed by the authors. It once in a while is a little condescending to the reader.

If you're looking for an academic thoughtfulness of distance education, buy the far superior The Perfect Online Course: Best Practices for Designing and Teaching (PB) (Perspectives in Instructional Technology & Distance Education S.).

See all 14 client reviews...