A vision of the future of education in which the classroom experience
is distributed across space and time without compromising learning.
What if there were a model for learning in which the classroom
experience was distributed across space and time--and students could
still have the benefits of the traditional classroom, even if they can't
be present physically or learn synchronously? In this book, two experts
in online learning envision a future in which education from
kindergarten through graduate school need not be tethered to a single
physical classroom. The distributed classroom would neither sacrifice
students' social learning experience nor require massive development
resources. It goes beyond hybrid learning, so ubiquitous during the
COVID-19 pandemic, and MOOCs, so trendy a few years ago, to reimagine
the classroom itself.
David Joyner and Charles Isbell, both of Georgia Tech, explain how
recent developments, including distance learning and learning management
systems, have paved the way for the distributed classroom. They propose
that we dispense with the dichotomy between online and traditional
education, and the assumption that online learning is necessarily
inferior. They describe the distributed classroom's various delivery
modes for in-person students, remote synchronous students, and remote
asynchronous students; the goal would be a symmetry of experiences, with
both students and teachers able to move from one mode to another. With
The Distributed Classroom, Joyner and Isbell offer an optimistic,
learner-centric view of the future of education, in which every person
on earth is turned into a potential learner as barriers of cost,
geography, and synchronicity disappear.
