Distance Education Technologies

Changes in the types of technologies available for delivering distance education, including changes in the capabilities of networking technology and the rise of the Internet, have played a role in the adoption of distance education by postsecondary institutions. This chapter provides information about the types of technologies employed by all postsecondary institutions to deliver distance education. The chapter begins by defining the technologies included in this study, and then proceeds to describe the technologies used during 1997–98 by institutional type. To provide insight into the dynamic nature of distance education technologies, the chapter concludes with information about postsecondary institutions' plans for the use of various technologies in the next 3 years. Trend analyses for the subset of higher education institutions can be found in chapter 7, Changes in Distance Education Since 1994–95.

Technologies Included in This Study

This study asked about the following technologies available for the instructional delivery of distance education courses. Courses conducted exclusively through written correspondence were not included in this study.

• Video technologies: two-way video with twoway audio (also referred to as two-way interactive video), one-way video with twoway audio, one-way live video, and one-way prerecorded video (including prerecorded videotapes provided to students, and television broadcast and cable transmission using prerecorded video).
• Audio technologies: two-way audio transmission (e.g., audio/phone conferencing) and one-way audio transmission (including radio broadcast and prerecorded audiotapes provided to students).
• Internet-based technologies: Internet courses using synchronous (i.e., simultaneous or "real time") computer-based instruction (e.g., interactive computer conferencing or Interactive Relay Chat), and Internet courses using asynchronous (i.e., not simultaneous) computer-based instruction (e.g., e-mail, listserves, and most World Wide Web-based courses).
• Other technologies: CD-ROM, mixed mode packages (i.e., a mix of technologies that cannot be assigned to a primary mode), and an open-ended "other, specify" category.

Instructional Technologies Used in 1997–98

Institutions that offered distance education courses in 1997–98 were asked which types of technology the institution used as a primary mode of instructional delivery for distance education courses in 1997–98. An individual course could have only one predominant mode of delivery.¹⁵ Institutions could, however, indicate that they used many different technologies as primary modes of instructional delivery across all of their distance education courses, since different distance education courses could use different types of technology. Information was not collected about the number of courses offered using each technology as the primary instructional delivery mode, only whether the institution used it at all as a primary mode of instruction for distance education courses.

More institutions used asynchronous Internet instruction (58 percent of institutions), two-way interactive video (54 percent), and one-way prerecorded video (47 percent) than used any of the other technologies as a primary mode of instructional delivery for distance education courses (table 17). Nineteen percent of the institutions offered courses using synchronous Internet instruction, and 14 percent used one-way video with two-way audio. Eight percent or fewer of the institutions used each of the other technologies (see table 17) as a primary instructional mode. Thus, the results indicate that more institutions used several types of video technologies and the Internet-based technologies than the other modes of delivery.

Differences in the use of the technologies may vary by institutional type due to factors such as the differing costs and resources required for various technologies, the kinds of students that are targeted by the different types of institutions, and the different kinds of courses that are offered by the institutions. The results indicate that the likelihood of using some of the technologies did vary substantially by institutional type. For example, among institutions offering distance education courses in 1997–98, two-way interactive video was more likely to be used by public 4-year institutions (80 percent) than by any other type of institution, and by public 2-year institutions (53 percent) more than private 4-year institutions (29 percent; table 17). One-way prerecorded video was reported as a primary mode of instruction more often by public 2-year institutions (62 percent) than by either public or private 4-year institutions, and by public 4-year institutions (44 percent) more often than by private 4-year institutions (26 percent). The Internet technologies, however, were generally about equally likely to be used by the various types of institutions, ranging from 16 percent to 22 percent for synchronous Internet instruction, and from 57 percent to 61 percent for asynchronous Internet instruction.

Plans for Use of Instructional Technologies in the Next 3 Years

Institutions that offered distance education courses in 1997–98 (34 percent of all institutions) or that planned to offer distance education courses in the next 3 years (20 percent of all institutions) were asked about their plans for the use of different types of technologies as a primary mode of instructional delivery in the next 3 years. For each technology, institutions indicated whether they planned to reduce the number of courses using that technology, keep the same number of courses, start using or increase the number of courses, or had no plans to use that technology in the next 3 years. For each of the technologies, 1 percent or fewer of the institutions planned to reduce their use of that technology as a primary instructional delivery mode in the next 3 years (table 18). Eleven percent of the institutions indicated that they planned to keep the same number of courses using one-way prerecorded video.

Institutions planned to start using or increase their use of asynchronous Internet instruction as a primary mode of delivery more than any other type of technology, with 82 percent of the institutions planning to start or increase their use of this technology (table 18). Two-way interactive video (cited by 61 percent) and synchronous Internet instruction (cited by 60 percent) were also frequently indicated as technologies planned for an increasing role in delivering distance education in the next 3 years. About a third of institutions planned to start using or increase their use of one-way prerecorded video (35 percent), CD-ROM (31 percent), and multi-mode packages (30 percent). Seventeen percent or fewer of the institutions planned to start using or increase their use of the remaining technologies.

Table 19 shows the percentage of institutions that planned to start or increase their use of the technologies in the next 3 years, presented separately for institutions that offered distance education in 1997–98 and institutions that planned to start offering distance education in the next 3 years. Plans for the two groups were not significantly different for most technologies. Two-way interactive video, asynchronous Internet instruction, and multi-mode packages were some exceptions. For each of these three technologies, institutions that offered distance education courses in 1997–98 were more likely than institutions that planned to start offering distance education in the next 3 years to plan to start or increase their use of this technology.

Summary

In 1997–98, more institutions used several types of video technologies and the Internet-based technologies to deliver distance education courses than the other modes of delivery. Specifically, more institutions used asynchronous Internet instruction, two-way interactive video, and oneway prerecorded video than used any of the other technologies as a primary mode of instructional delivery.

Use of some of the technologies differed by institutional type. For example, two-way interactive video was more likely to be used by public 4-year institutions than by any other type of institution, and by public 2-year institutions more than private 4-year institutions. One-way prerecorded video was more likely to be used by public 2-year institutions than by any other type of institution, and by public 4-year institutions more than private 4-year institutions. The Internet technologies, however, were about equally likely to be used by the various types of institutions. Differences in the use of the technologies by institutional type may be due to factors such as the differing costs and resources required for the various technologies, the different kinds of courses that are offered by the institutions and how well those courses fit with the technologies, and whether the types of students targeted by the institutions are a good fit with the technologies.

The results suggest that planned investments in distance education technology over the next 3 years are more likely to be made on more advanced generations of distance education technologies. More institutions indicated plans to start using or increase their use of asynchronous Internet instruction , two-way interactive video, and synchronous Internet instruction in the next 3 years than of other technologies. This suggests that interactive video and the Internet technologies are a growing mode of delivery among postsecondary institutions.

¹⁵ If a course used multiple technologies to deliver instruction but one mode predominated, institutions were instructed to indicate the predominant mode for the course. If no primary mode could be identified, then the course would be considered to use a mixedmode package as the primary mode of instructional delivery.

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