| The University of Illinois through the Illinois Online Network has been offering an 8- week fully online course titled, Online Learning: An Overview, as part of the award winning Making the Virtual Classroom a Reality (MVCR) program for nine years. This course was specifically designed as an interactive student-led discussion-centered elearning experience as is typical for the distance education field in the United States. However, analysis of the history of distance education as well as current global course offerings shows that less social means of distance education have been and still are viable educational alternatives to the traditional classroom. Furthermore, evaluations completed for this course as well as final program evaluations in MVCR show that a significant portion of students would prefer an independent-study model. This study questions the dominant U.S. distance education paradigm by analyzing the same course taught at the same time by the same instructor under two activity-different but content-equivalent instructional designs. Variables analyzed through experiential case study, content analysis, an instructor journal, and surveys include student satisfaction and self-perceived learning, instructor satisfaction, instructor time requirements, and depth or level of student demonstrated knowledge. |
