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Emerging technologies and distributed learning

Dede, C. (1996). Emerging technologies and distributed learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 10(2), 4-36.

Abstract

The development of high performance computing and communications is creating new media, such as the World Wide Web and virtual realities. In turn, these new media enable new types of messages and experiences; for example, interpersonal interactions across network channels lead to the formation of virtual communities. The innovative kinds of pedagogy empowered by these emerging media, messages, and experiences make possible an evolution of synchronous, group, presentation-centered forms of distance education-which replicate traditional "teaching by telling" across barriers of distance and time-into an alternative instructional paradigm: distributed learning. In particular, advances in computer-supported collaborative learning, multimedia/hypermedia, and experiential simulation offer the potential to create shared "learning-through-doing environments" available anyplace, any time, on demand. This article speculates about how emerging technologies may reshape both face-to-face and distance education, delineating a three-part conceptual framework (knowledge webs, virtual communities, and shared synthetic environments) for understanding the new types of instructional messages that enable distributed learning.

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