Research Associate, Contact North | Contact Nord

tony.bates@ubc.ca

There is a long history of the use of technology in distance education. It is necessary to look

beyond the technological tools to examine the systems of media that enable meaning to be

communicated and understood through the use of technology. The article looks at the

development of oral, written, video and computer technologies and media from the perspective

of their influence on distance education. It concludes with some lessons from this historical

perspective regarding media and technology in distance education today.

qui permettent à une signification d’être communiquée et comprise au moyen des

technologies. Cet article s’intéresse au développement des technologies orale, écrite, audio

et vidéo et à celui des médias du point de vue de leur influence sur la formation à distance, et

conclut sur quelques leçons à tirer de cette perspective historique quant à l’usage des

technologies et des médias dans la formation à distance d’aujourd’hui.

El uso de las tecnologías en la formación a distancia tiene una larga historia. Más allá de las

herramientas tecnológicas, cabe considerar los dispositivos mediáticos que permiten que se

comunique y entienda un significado por medio de las tecnologías. Este artículo se interesa

comunicación

All history is in some sense personal, driven by the interests and background of those who write the history.

My history of technology in distance education will inevitably be influenced by my British and North

American, mainly anglophone, experience.

Secondly, definitions in this field are particularly important. In my open, online textbook, Teaching in a

just sit there until commanded to do something or until they are activated or until a person starts to interact

For communication to occur, a medium also requires a deliberate act to create a message or content, and

someone who receives and interprets the message. Thus, there are three essential components of a

communication medium: someone who creates a message or content, the technology that carries the

message or content, and someone to interpret the message or content (see Shannon & Weaver,

of research and theory around how meaning is conveyed by signs or images, called semiology (see, for

instance, Barthes, 1970). Media of course depend on technology, but technology is only one element of

media. In reality, technology and media are continually used interchangeably in everyday communications,

and it is not always easy to make a clear separation or distinction. (For instance, is the Internet a medium

or a technology? It will depend on the context in which the word is used.) However, the distinction is

important, particularly in education. Technology is too narrow a lens; we really need to talk about media in

education.

This distinction is important because it enables us to consider face-to-face teaching as just another medium

of communication. Then we can examine and compare the ‘affordances’, the potential educational benefits,

of both face-to-face teaching, and other media or delivery systems, such as online learning.

With this conceptual background I will now provide my personal history of technology and media in distance

education.

One of the earliest means of formal teaching was oral – through human speech – although over time,

technology has been increasingly used to facilitate or ‘back-up’ oral communication. In ancient times,

stories, folklore, histories and news were transmitted and maintained through oral communication, making

accurate memorization a critical skill, and the oral tradition is still the case in many aboriginal cultures. For

the ancient Greeks, oratory and speech were the means by which people learned and passed on learning.

Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey were recitative poems, intended for public performance. To be learned,

they had to be memorized by listening, not by reading, and transmitted by recitation, not by

Even though Socrates is reported to have railed against the use of writing, written forms of communication

make analytic, lengthy chains of reasoning and argument much more accessible, reproducible without

distortion, and thus more open to analysis and critique than the transient and synchronous (same time and

Because of the explosion of written documents resulting from the mechanization of printing, many more

people in government and business were required to become literate and analytical, which led to a rapid

expansion of formal education in Europe. There were many reasons for the development of the

Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the triumph of reason and science over superstition and beliefs

in Europe, but the technology of printing was a key agent of change (Eisenstein, 1979).

Thus, oral communication remains as strong today in education as ever, but has been incorporated into or

accommodated by new technologies.

Attempts to replicate the teaching process through artificial intelligence (AI) began in the mid-1980s, with

a focus initially on teaching arithmetic. Despite large investments of research in AI for teaching over the

last 30 years, the results generally have been disappointing (see Bates et al., 2020). It has proved difficult

for machines to cope with the extraordinary variety of ways in which students learn (or fail to learn). Recent

developments in cognitive science and neuroscience are being watched closely but at the time of writing

the gap is still great between the basic science, and analysing or predicting specific learning behaviours

from the science.

More recently we have seen the development of adaptive learning, which analyses learners’ responses

then re-directs them to the most appropriate content area, based on their performance (Moskal et al.,

2017). Learning analytics, which also collects data about learner activities and relates them to other data,

At the University of Guelph in Canada, a software system called CoSy was developed in the 1980s that

allowed for online threaded group discussion forums, a predecessor to today’s forums contained in learning

management systems. In 1988, the Open University in the United Kingdom offered a course, DT200, that

as well as the OU’s traditional media of printed texts, television programs and audio-cassettes, also

included an online discussion component using CoSy. Since this course had 1,200 registered students, it

was one of the earliest ‘mass’ open online courses (Mason, 1989).

technologies), and ‘modern’ applications of artificial intelligence to teaching and learning. These are not

well enough established yet to know their ultimate value in education.

It can be seen that distance education has adopted and adapted technology over a long period of time. In

particular, many claims made for a newly emerging technology are likely to be neither true nor new. What

we need to understand better are the educational affordances of emerging media: what they can do better

than existing media.

Also, new technology rarely completely replaces an older technology. Usually the old technology remains,

operating within a more specialised ‘niche’, such as radio, or integrated as part of a richer technology

environment, such as video in the Internet.

technology is much cheaper, more user-friendly and more reliable

as a result, it is more ubiquitous, and no longer the domain of educational or technology specialists:

it is being used by everyone, and especially students

consequently, a great deal of online learning is now informal as well as formal, and educators are still

learning how best to work with this

distance education, to a force for radical change in our educational systems – but radical change

based on the full potential of digital learning is something that still has yet to occur on any significant

scale, although the response to COVID-19 will accelerate such changes.

the challenges for distance learning are no longer technological, but ones of desire, organization and

appropriate application based on prior knowledge, experiment, and evaluation.

However, what distinguishes the digital age from all previous ages is the rapid pace of technology

development and our immersion in technology-based activities in our daily lives. Thus, it is fair to

describe the impact of the Internet on education as a paradigm shift, at least in terms of educational