By Caitlin Crawshaw / Illustration by Arwen Giel
For nearly two decades, I was that annoying kid in the front row dislocating my arm trying to get the teacher’s attention. Then, after donning the cap and gown in 2005, I traded my backpack full of textbooks and worn-out jeans for a red leather briefcase and a business suit. Sure, I’ve never looked more upstanding, but I’m in a desperate state of academic withdrawal.
Now that I’m a self-employed professional with clients and bills to pay, there’s no professor to write A+ on my assignments. Instead, I send my work out into the internet ethos and my “grades” arrive a few weeks later: cheques in my mailbox.
Admittedly, my affinity for the front row hasn’t always, how shall I put this, strengthened my personal brand. A keener among keeners, I was dubbed a teacher’s pet by my entire Chemistry 20 summer-school class. I was also an easy target for a statistics prof once; the short skirt/tall boots combo was a dubious choice. Yet these memories have failed to curb my cravings for the heady rush of an all-nighter and new textbooks come September. Still, I resigned myself to working for a living. After all, I’ve got a partner, a mortgage and cats to feed. Having just put down roots, I wasn’t about to rip them up to enroll in a graduate program halfway across the country.
Then, one Sunday morning while surfing the web, I practically snorted coffee out of my nose when I spotted the site – Ryerson University’s Chang School of Continuing Education. An actual, respected university offering a program – a certificate in publishing – that was relevant to me. I emailed the coordinator right away, hoping I could sneak into the next semester, which started in a month. His reply arrived after dinner that day. I squealed with joy.
Had I connected the dots, I might have considered distance learning earlier. My aunt in Victoria, a nursing instructor and career counsellor who has taught several online courses, had recommended it as a tonic for my peculiar pedagogical addiction. Another aunt, in Calgary, earned her social work master’s online from an Australian university. (She and her teenaged daughter flew to Florida and completed their studies beachside with laptops.)
Learning at home isn’t a new concept. Correspondence education dates back to the mid-19th century, and has long been a common way to upgrade your high-school status or complete hated courses. (Career and Life Management 20, anyone?) It’s particularly popular in remote settings, hours or days from the nearest city. The evolution of distance learning is intertwined with the emergence of new technologies, and the internet has led to an explosion of offerings. But now that I’ve decided to take a stab at laptop learning, I can’t help but wonder how well it works. And will it work for me?
Sir Isaac Pitman, an educator in England, reportedly taught shorthand by mail in the 1840s. But most academics cite Anna Eliot Ticknor as the mother of the field. In the 1870s, the bright-eyed, rather plump 50-year-old Bostonian established the first formal distance education program in the United States. At the time, women’s colleges were popping up across the country, but Ticknor – the well-educated daughter of a Harvard professor – felt that opportunities should be available to students who lived far from such institutions. So she created the Society to Encourage Studies at Home.
While never advertised, women flocked to Ticknor’s society; it served about 10,000 students during its 24-year lifespan. A $2 annual fee gave people access to courses on topics ranging from history and politics to physics and anatomy. They communicated with instructors and received course materials (including books, maps and photographs) through the mail.
The first big technological leap happened in 1910, when educational films emerged – an invention that was expected to revolutionize learning. Another method, instructional radio, proved less effective. The U.S. government granted broadcasting licenses to more than 200 post-secondary institutions and school boards, but by the 1940s the approach had lost its appeal. Instruction by video, however, endured – and is now ingrained. Carleton University is one of many schools that records and televises classes; 47 credit courses are on CUTV in 2007-08. Moreover, many contemporary distance learning programs rely on internet videoconferencing, which can be easier to navigate than post-office lineups.
Category: Career Track, Know-How, The Academy, Work
