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Director of Audio Courses Christopher Hambly was recently interviewed regarding the subject of Social Exclusion in the context of Distance Education, and asked how Audio Courses addresses these issues. The interesting transcript can be read here.

The Social and Economic exclusions affecting a student’s ability to learn are considered to be many factors, such as:

· Access to learning,
· Cost of learning,
· A student’s location - too far away or rural isolation,
· Disability, · No transport or the cost of public transport,
· Family responsibilities,
· The timetabling of courses etc.

1. As Audio courses is an online learning company; how do you feel that Audio Courses helps to overcome some of the above barriers to learning?

Open and Distance Education (ODL) has a history of striving for widening participation to learners. In fact the word “open” simply means opening up education in all of the spheres in the above list. Audio Courses (http://www.audiocourses.com ) is constructed from an ODL perspective. The Audio Courses slogan is “Online Audio courses Anywhere in the World”.

2. Does Audio Courses offer Distance Learning Courses or Online Learning Courses (or both)?

Audio Courses offers both “open” distance learning courses and “open” online learning courses. We find that many people simply do not understand the difference, and even worse, we find many “teachers” think text materials can simply be uploaded and they miraculously have an online course. This is a common misconception and without appropriate “changed” approaches to management, delivery and support, online education gets bad press as being a cheap alternative and in fact can “close” and socially exclude very well. Correctly administered ODL can be more costly than face-to-face (F2F) education.

3. Predominantly what type of learner do your courses seem to attract?

We attract a wide spectrum of learners with widely varying backgrounds, cultures and abilities, form all corners of the world, including more recently, third world countries. We have not, as yet, had requests from the middle east and communist countries where internet filtering takes places. However, the majority of our attention comes from the USA and UK where there seems to be the greatest saturation of internet use. This is also a product of our marketing strategy.

4. In your opinion would these learners be able to study for the same or a similar course/qualification through traditional learning methods?

Without detailed demographic information on a set of learners it would be difficult to ascertain. However, Audio Courses can state that certainly the content we teach can be delivered in a F2F mode though we would question if the openness we pride ourselves on would exist. The qualification exists in traditional modes but the methodologies and paradigms are radically different. Face-to-face courses can in no way simply be converted for “online”, in fact a completely different strategy needs to exist. Audio Courses staff are well researched and professionally qualified in this field.

5. What barriers do you feel that online learners or distance education learners face, which are not faced in traditional classroom education?

One of the greatest challenges for online learners can be the removal of the social aspect of traditional education. However, Audio Courses has mechanisms in place to combat this fear and provides systems to enable an online social community to flourish. Additionally, the fear of technology, and the maintenance and support of that, can also present major obstacles to newcomers to online education. This support issue is a major theme within ODL circles.

6. Do the courses you provide overcome these and if so, how?

We provide online “live” workshops whereby synchronous communicative technologies are employed as a means of providing the “human” factor to learners who just need to talk. We also provide telephone lines for mentoring and tutorial support. Essentially “teachers” become “guides by the side” rather than “sages on stages” delivering content. A power shift can be seen to take place with more responsibility given to learners and coursework is constructivist based whereby learners extract meaning from their own experiences.

7. Are there any social exclusions or economical exclusions that you can think of, that are still not addressed or overcome, even through online or distance learning based education?

The main social exclusion here I would suggest to be financial coupled with IT literacy. IT learning can be providing through online induction sessions and more recently with point-to-point computer “handshaking” where the instructor can control the learners computer. However, the difficult bit for the IT challenged is usually getting logged on!

8. What are your personal views on online learning/distance learning with regards to overcoming social exclusion?