Successful engagement in Open and Distance Learning.

Day Schools, Open Learning Resources and Artificial Intelligence Together Determine Success in Open and Distance Learning  

Introduction 

When Curiosity blooms alongside self discipline, Open and Distance learning (ODL) can facilitate learning anything that an individual desires. The universe is filled with an abundance of information to explore - yet most individuals remain reluctant to explore these phenomena and harness this universal knowledge for their success. . 

Most people are aware that once they become aware of these universal principles, they will be able to manipulate it to become successful in life but yet are reluctant to do so. However, how many of us are aware of these resources. Even the ones who are aware of these resources are reluctant to use them even though they believe that it contains effective methods to become successful in life and that most of the individuals are motivated towards reaching growth. 

Can We Define Open and Distance Learning as Borderless Education? 

“I don’t know it, YET”, The word “yet” is the mentality that an individual should develop when exploring new things. Learning is limitless with Open and Distance learning. It only requires curiosity for a person to learn anything.  

The term “Open” emphasizes on who can and how to enroll in an Open and Distance learning program. Good news is that there’s no rigid guidelines used in the selection process. Thus, regardless of the age and prior qualifications, one can enroll in any program of interest. This rewires the individuals to change their perception about their success in academics. Negative influences of their belief on the age restriction barrier with regard to academic success being passive (Out of one’s control) while maintaining a victim mindset (Individual blaming the past for not been successful academically) can be address through Open and Distance learning as there are no age restrictions or any other psychological barriers. 

Distance Learning emphasizes the convenience in accessing learning materials. Open and Distance Learning does not require tutors and students to stay in a dedicated location. As the lectures will get recorded, the students will have the option to go through the recordings at their convenience. In simple terms, Open and Distance learning does not require both students and tutors to be together during a learning process.       

An individual can use Open and Distance learning to master their skills, for their higher studies. Not just that this will also help the individuals who have reached the Self actualization stage to experience new passions.   

             

Open and Distance Learning and its Implication towards Developing a Growth Mindset 

Open and Distance learning unconsciously or consciously motivate a person to develop and maintain a growth mindset. Open and Distance learning is a learner based education system. Facilitators of the course will provide course materials and also arrange a limited number of day schools with limited duration. Day schools are arranged with the assumptions that the students have already gone through the sessions and conducted further research and the questions the students need further clarification are organized and listed since day schools are mainly focus to clarify the questions that the students still have even after conducting further studies regarding a specific phenomenon/s. Thus, influence students to conduct further studies regarding a certain phenomenon rather than only relying on provided course materials. As they will be influenced to do this over a period of four years, the chances that the students develop a growth mindset by the time that they graduate. Developing a growth mindset will influence the students to be optimistic about life. 

Learning versus Studying

Open and Distance learning promotes learning over studying. Learning is active compared to studying and a much more convenient way to memorize content. When studying, the main focus would be to somehow memorize the content without trying to understand the content while learning is about relating the current content or stimuli with previous memories which will make things easier to recall at a later stage. Therefore, learning requires a very advanced cognitive process compared to studying. 

   

  

Benefits of Open and Distance Learning over Conventional Classroom Learning    

         

Prior to moving forward, it is vital to distinguish some of the differences between Conventional classroom teaching and Open and Distance learning. Time flexibility, availability to access online resources throughout the day, possibility to attend day schools at the convenience of both students and tutors,and student based learning are some of the positive traits of Open and Distance learning.  In contrast, Conventional learning requires both the students and the tutor to locate at one specific location, teacher based learning. Also in Conventional learning the student is mostly limited to the knowledge of the tutor that will result in developing a narrowed perception. 

Physical and psychological comfort is also another crucial positive point of Open and Distance learning. Comparing with Conventional classroom teaching where it requires the students to travel and be at an exact physical location, If a student is traveling from a long distance, it will make things difficult to focus on studies as the student is going through discomfort which demotivates her to engage in studies. However, Open and Distance learning offers huge benefits with regard to this aspect. With Open and Distance learning, a person can wake up 30 minutes prior to the lectures have a wash and get ready and fresh with mental comfort prior to attending online lectures. This can be considered as one of the main objectives of Open and Distance learning. When a person is at comfort during a learning process, that will help the student to understand the materials well and memorize the content which will help to easily recall the information in a later stage. 

Successful Engagement in Open and Distance Learning   

Before starting the proceedings, students need to develop a study plan that will help to stay consistent and disciplined regarding academic tasks. Success in Open and Distance learning is inevitable if an effective study plan’s been created while using online open resources during a learning process.      

 

Development of an Effective Study Plan

Usually, the education institute using Open and Distance learning uploads the course materials to the online system prior to conducting the day schools. There will be a time gap between uploading the course materials and arrangements of day schools. This gives time for students to go through the course materials prior to attending the day schools.

The first thing that the students should do when going through the course materials is to develop an effective study plan. It is important to consider the complexity of the course materials and the time available for a person to allocate for studies each day. If an individual has less time that they could spend for studies per day, the study plan should be started at the earliest possible. An individual who feels that they have no time at all for studies, should consider writing down all the task that the person would usually do in a day and remove the tasks that the individual feels worthless spending time on. Afterwards, fit in tasks pertaining to academics can replace the tasks removed. It is also important to keep a “Buzz time” to manage time effectively in unexpected circumstances. 

Importance of Consistency in Open and Distance Learning Process

Once the study plans are being developed, the other important thing is to be consistent. There are several methods that we can use to be more consistent. One of  the best methods is to stick a larger calendar in front of the study desk. Everyday once after completing the allocated number of hours to effectively study the content, one should cross off that date, when continuing to do this, an individual will ultimately come up with a chain of crosses. As s/he continues, the chain is getting bigger and bigger. Now the individual is motivated not to break the chain and will be able to maintain consistency according to the developed study plan. 

Principles of the Cognitive Dissonance theory can be related to help an individual to maintain consistency. According to the theory, humans experience a mental tension when holding onto two conflicting beliefs or conflicting beliefs and actions and the humans are motivated to resolve this this tension at the earliest possible This can be done through by either changing actions of a person, or change the beliefs that the person is holding onto or change the perception that the person is holding on to with regard to that action.

Resources available for Open and Distance learning  

There are an immense number of online open study resources available. However, only a few are aware of it and the usage of those resources are also very minimal. This develops a fascinating argument to evaluate the reasons as to why humans easily get motivated to either the neutral or negative side of technology rather than the positive side of it. This too will critically analyze through a separate blog post. 

Powerfulness of Open learning resources in Open and Distance Learning 

Below mentioned online sources are some of the Open online resources which will enable you to learn anything despite the physical distance or without having any prior knowledge.        

MIT OpenCourseWare - https://ocw.mit.edu/, Coursera - https://www.coursera.org/, Khan Academy - https://www.khanacademy.org/ 

This learning process is similar to learning from multiple teachers at once. The other benefit of these open study resources is that it will help an individual to evaluate different perceptions about a given philosophy, as he/she will be able to go through plenty of different materials written by others related to a specific philosophy. That will help a student to understand the phenomenon from different perspectives which will help to widen their wisdom on the given phenomenon.

These study materials are accountable as they have been posted by experts in the respective fields. This highlights the link between the Central route to persuasion (Influencing people to democratically accept the meaning of a persuasive message).  with Open and Distance learning which will also be discussed through a different blog post,

Apart from that, these open resources will not only help an individual to learn the course content just to pass an examination but it also contains plenty of scientifically proven techniques that one can use to become successful in all aspects of life. However, what’s skeptic here is that, even though people mostly prefer to have a successful life, most of the individuals are reluctant to go through these materials. Even most people who love reading, prefer to read novels compared to scientific fiction.  .  

         

There are also open resources where you will be able to find precise and accountable statistics pertaining to different industries and fields. Below are some of the open source resources that one can use to find globally accepted statistics in their learning process. These statistics will immensely help an individual even when conducting primary research (their own researches, based on their own research findings).

World Bank Open Data - https://data.worldbank.org/country/sri-lanka, Our World in Data - https://ourworldindata.org/, OCED statistics - https://data-explorer.oecd.org/ and UN Data - https://data.un.org/ are some of such open resources enabling students to obtain accurate statistics with regard to a phenomenon.

If needed, the accountability of the information can be further checked by comparing one aspect’s value in 2 or more different websites. For example,the percentage of Primary school enrollment in Sri Lanka in both World Bank Open Data and Our World in Data, the initial states that by 2022 it was 96% and according to Our World in data it was 96.9 in 2021. The year that they have last updated the data.   

Impact of Day Schools in Determining Success of an Open and Distance Learning Program     

As discussed previously, day schools are arranged with the assumptions that the students have already gone through the course materials and that the students are fully organized with the questions that they require further clarification. 

As the students are encouraged to conduct further studies, the tutors are also required to have a thorough understanding with regard to a specific phenomenon to provide clarification to the questions raised by the students. If the tutors too need further clarification prior to providing clarification, they can request for time to properly go through the content prior to clarifying their questions. 

Lecturers' acceptance of the fact that they lack knowledge with regard to the question raised reflect on the cultural dimension of power distance of the culture (Social gap between different societal levels) and whether the tutor acts with a growth mindset. Institutions should be vigilant to enrol lecturers with a growth mindset, as lecturers are prominent figures and the way they behave can act as vicarious motivation (Indirect motivation by observing the consequences of others behaviors). Active participation of both tutor and students are important for a successful Open and Distance learning program.  

Artificial Intelligence on Open and Distance Learning 

Last but not the least, the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) towards the success of Open and Distance learning process. However, when using AI one should not solely rely on the answer provided by the AI and also should avoid direct copy and paste when doing assignments. However, you can use different AI tools along with accountable resources during a learning procedure. AI immensely support to break a concept into its simplest terms and explain with real life examples, as this will help you to create effective memory cues, involvement of AI will help an individual to memorize content and to recall those information effectively during an examination.                     

Challenges of Open and Distance Learning 

There aren’t many challenges compared to benefits. However, there are two challenges in Open and Distance learning that need to be immediately rectified for the success of Open and Distance learning.

1. Lack of technological infrastructure - This is mostly apparent in developing countries compared to developed countries. This limitation limits individuals living in rural areas as they will also likely to experience signal interruptions as well. 

          2. Lack of IT literacy rate. - When it comes to Open and Distance learning, as there are no age restrictions, the individuals from Baby boomers generation, Generation X and Generation Y to a certain extent will experience difficulties in accessing online materials. This can demotivate the individuals to give up on Open and Distance learning programs. However, there are some individuals even from these generations who maintain a growth mindset to keep up with the environmental changes. Their flexibility to change and adaptability to changes occurring in the environment will be a huge determinant of their success. 

Future Implications of Open and Distance Learning

       

Most universities that’s engaged in Open and Distance learning prefer conducting examinations in one physical area rather than conducting them online. This fact has also been rationalized as it will make things easier for an individual to cheat during an examination even though their camera are on. However, this is only applicable if a common paper and a common way of assessment is conducted during an examination. Assume an examination pertaining to Psychology where the students will be given an ambiguous image or a short movie and asked to determine the mental and psychological disorder/s that the movie characters are going through and the theories that can be used to assist such individuals and provide justification for selecting the theory. This will be beneficial when assessing the applications of such theories in applied psychology and this will ultimately produce quality psychologists and other professionals in the field.    

Conclusion 

After considering all the facts presented above, it is evident that Open and Distance learning offers a higher level of benefits for an individual who has the curiosity to learn. Open and Distance learning helps to develop a growth mindset in a person which will be beneficial holistically as it will help to have an optimistic perspective about life. Open and Distance learning promotes learning over studying. Easy accessibility for lectures at one's convenience can be considered as one of the main benefits of Open and Distance learning. Time flexibility, availability to access course materials throughout the day, Not having rigid guidelines are some other benefits of Open and Distance learning. The usage of open online learning resources and proper use of Artificial Intelligence will determine the success of Open and Distance learning.       

References

Victoria University.(n.d.).How to make an effective study plan.https://www.vu.edu.au/about-vu/news-events/study-space/how-to-make-an-effective-study-plan  

Birchwood University.(2024, January 9). Reasons why Distance Education is the Future. Birchwood University. https://www.birchwoodu.org/reasons-why-distance-education-is-the-future/

Ecole Globale International Girls' School.(2023, March 16).The Challenges and Benefits of Distance Learning.https://www.ecoleglobale.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-distance-learning/

Williston State College. (2023,October 10). Unlocking knowledge: The power of open educational resources (OER).https://willistonstate.edu/news/Unlocking-Knowledge-The-Power-of-Open-Educational-Resources-(OER)/