New Tools of the Trade

"Each medium, independent of the content it mediates, has its own intrinsic effects which are its unique message."

—Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan first articulated what has become a mantra of the Information Age: "The medium is the message." The tools that support the interactions of your distance learning program are more than a collection of functions and features; they create more complex challenges than access or costs. Your choice of tools and how you use them will impact which students come to you, how successful they are, and the subtle messages you project about the value, purpose, and goals of your program.

The role of media in how information is received, absorbed, and processed should not be underestimated. Consider a somewhat extreme example:

Scenario 1: Employee enters the human resources (HR) director's office for a private meeting. The HR director says, "Jane, you've been doing an outstanding job. As you know, though, we're moving toward a complete restructuring of your department, and your particular job is going to be eliminated. I'd like to talk with you about the options, both for accepting severance and utilizing our job search services."

Scenario 2: Employee receives an email from the HR director, which states:

Subject line: We need to meet

Jane, you've been doing an outstanding job. As you know, though, we're moving toward a complete restructuring of your department, and your particular job is going to be eliminated. I'd like to talk with you about the options, both for accepting severance and utilizing our job search services.

Sam Smith Director of Human Resources Widget Co.: Excellence is our Passion!

It's a bad day in either case, but put yourself in Jane's position: Which communication makes you more willing to work with the person presenting the information? The same words are used, but the impact is quite different if they're said by a person rather than having the employee read the news on a screen. The medium is an inextricable component of what is communicated.

A distance learning instructor needs to have an understanding of the following factors:

• Tools potentially available

• Impact the tools of choice may have on the delivery of a course and on student and instructor satisfaction

• Availability

• Budget

• Applicability of available tools to the needs of a particular project

This chapter will discuss the characteristics of the various tools that a distance instructor may decide to use, including pros, cons, and uses of each.

However, an essential consideration for any communication tool is the ease of use for the recipient of the message. Therefore, a fundamental question is always, "What are the expectations, skills, and norms of my students?" New methods of communication are constantly introduced into our networked world, and different audiences adopt these tools at different rates. When I was researching the first edition of Teach Beyond Your Reach in 2005, I would not have incorporated instant messaging into a learning toolkit aimed at mid-career professional adults because I wouldn't have been sure about their comfort level with the tool. However, by 2012, I don't hesitate: I believe that this audience is now more comfortable with such tools for effective communication.

This variability creates exciting times for instructors, with opportunities to grow and learn new skills. If you embrace that change, it will help your teaching and interactions become that much more creative.

Who Chooses Your Tools?

You may have no control over the tools you are able to use. You may be hired to teach a course and then handed a particular platform or set of tools for delivering the instruction. Or you may be in a situation of creating a learning environment entirely on your own without a budget or any technical support. Any teaching scenario will involve some requirements that are more or less out of your control.

Regardless of the degree of control you have over the tools, however, understanding all the variables involved and the pros and cons of each tool will enable you to make effective instructional choices to achieve your goals with your students.

But at the outset, it's important to keep a basic set of assumptions in mind about the technology, orientation, and comfort of both you and your students:

• Connected online: Business, social lives, and education have all irrevocably moved online. Using email or text messaging is as commonplace as using the phone for voice calls (or more so). You and your students have at least one internet-connected communication device (PC, laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer) for personal use.

• Access level: At least some of the web is accessible to you and your students, although you may have to address firewall issues and/or content that requires authentication to access (with IDs and passwords, or other form of validation). An additional assumption is that you and your students have high-speed access to these resources.

• Comfort: You and your students undergo some degree of online interaction — with colleagues, peers, or friends — through personal choice and because it is an increasingly comfortable medium.

• Customization: You and your students increasingly expect to have the option of customizing an online experience to your preferences, such as delivery methods (e.g., access via a website or having summaries emailed), priority topics, or the ability to share online material with selected contacts.

This is a fundamentally different set of assumptions than I used in the first edition of Teach Beyond Your Reach (published in 2006) or what I would have presented 2 years ago. The combination of technology advances, deeper penetration and adoption of online tools, and a generation entering the workforce that has been raised in an always-connected world has created this new — and exciting — environment in which we all interact.

Common Distance Learning Platforms

As more organizations are incorporating distance learning into their outreach, training, and support, more adults have become familiar with the most common platforms now being used. In a corporate environment, for example, it's common to have training or education delivered via web conference platforms such as WebEx (www.webex.com) or GoToMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com). In an educational setting, common platforms...