Distance
education is an educational field in which the main elements include the
physical separation of teachers and students during the educational process and
open educational resources such as freely available and openly licensed texts
and media, and other digital assets useful for learning, teaching, and
assessing as well as for research purposes.
Distance education focuses on pedagogy, technology and
instructional design to provide education to students who are not physically
"on-site" in a traditional classroom or campus college.
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| The concept of distance learning |
Basic Elements of Distance
Education
It is no secret to all that distance education, if
applied with professionalism, awareness and imagination, will contribute to
developing the learner's skills, employing his capabilities, developing them,
relying on himself for self-learning, and being able to learn the information that
he studies and acquires during his educational journey.
With strategies, distance education aims to provide students
with self-learning and knowledge acquisition skills through investigation,
research and exploration, problem-solving, decision-making, and positively
dealing with new information.
These are skills that contribute to making the creative and
productive generation in the future, but if distance education finds resistance
and dissatisfaction with its application, the results will be the opposite.
Therefore, we need to reconsider, by changing perceptions,
and accepting the age of development and modernity, with methods and strategies
to obtain information from multiple sources.
To contribute to supporting the distance education trend, we
need to review some of the basic requirements and skills that the learner must
master. And this is determined according to the following elements:
1. Requirements
We need many tools and equipment in the distance educational
process, such as:
The computer, the Internet, and the printer, in addition to
the basic drivers, such as office programs, file play applications of all
kinds, and multimedia players, such as video, audio and images, educational
sites, and approved educational platforms.
2. Skills
These are skills that the learner needs to acquire, such as:
A- Technical skills:
Such as dealing with the Windows system, such as creating new
documents, using word and image processing software, producing visual
presentations, e-mail, safe navigation through the Internet, and the ability to
download the required programs and applications.
B- Personal skills:
These are the skills that a person must acquire and develop
in order to equip him with strengths, such as taking responsibility,
patience, perseverance, time management, self-learning, research, flexibility
and passion, and critical and creative thinking.
3. Learning event
The learning event is divided into two types:
A- Synchronous learning:
Synchronous learning is a type of group learning in which a
group of students are engaging in learning at the same time and in the same
place.
In synchronous education, the teacher and students interact
at the same time. Targeted learners are required to log in to their
computers during specified times.
Synchronous learning happens in real-time, often with a set
class schedule and required login times.
B- Asynchronous learning:
Asynchronous learning is a form of education, instruction,
and learning that does not occur in the same place or at the same time.
Asynchronous learning is more self-directed, and the student
decides the times that he will learn and uses resources that facilitate
information sharing outside the constraints of time and place among a network
of people.
For the success of the education process, students need to
know the basics of dealing with educational platforms, through preparation,
communication, and interaction with explanations and assignments, interaction
with activities, their design, browsing and navigation between sites, and ease
of sharing information.
4. Responsibility
To achieve the desired success in distance education, we need
seriousness, solidarity, cooperation, and a great deal of awareness and
responsibility from (family - school)
In order to achieve success, the distance education stage is
a critical stage, and it requires a high degree of honesty and responsibility.
Because it is a patriotic, training and educational duty.
A- The role of the family:
Family is the key to success because it plays the role of the
direct supervisory authority on the student in the distance learning stage. Its
responsibility is to follow up, monitor and observe, organize student time, and
allocate time for study.
It is the family's duty to follow up on educational
developments, communicate with the school, request technical support, and
consult when needed, without hesitation.
B- The role of the school:
The school’s role requires skills in responding quickly and
adapting to events. This is to meet the students' needs, by preparing electronic
educational content, broadcasting and presenting it in a timely manner.
The teacher should prepare students mentally and
psychologically as in the usual class, through electronic content, and thorough
preparation.
The school's role also requires the formation of teamwork, to
achieve the goals that ensure the success of the distance education process,
such as follow-up, electronic support, digital content design, creative output,
preparation of schedules for the study material plan, following up of students
’attendance, measuring their progress, designing discussion sessions and
dialogue with students in the scientific material, and addressing their
deficiencies and the needs of educational losses.