Teaching and Learning at a Distance : Foundations of Distance Education

Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education, Fifth Edition, provides its readers with the most comprehensive coverage on the market today of information about distance education in the 21st century. Primarily written for pre-service teachers, corporate trainers, and staff development programs that discuss teaching distant learners or managing distance education systems. Readers will be better equipped with the knowledge and ability to select appropriate strategies for teaching the distant learner and how to implement this new knowledge in a distance learning program, so important to today's educational culture.

Five over-arching themes support the text: 1) defining distance education, 2) the importance of research development, 3) distance learning is a viable and increasingly important alternative for teaching and learning, 4) equivalency theory, and 5) the book should be comprehensive–which means it should cover as much as is possible of the various ways instruction is made available to distant learners.

Significantly revised and updated, the fifth edition now includes these noteworthy new features and more: chapter goals and objectives, chapter discussion questions, a look at best practice issues, new strategies and techniques, over thirty-percent new resources and references, and a stronger emphasis on how to design, deliver, and evaluate online instruction.

Michael Simonson is a program professor at Nova Southeastern University in the Instructional Technology and Distance Education program. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in Instructional Systems. He works with schools, organizations, and corporations to assist them to integrate instructional technology and distance education into teaching and training, and on the development of virtual schools. Simonson has authored four major textbooks dealing with distance education, instructional technology, instructional computing, and instructional media. Mike has over 150 scholarly publications, and in excess of 200 professional presentations dealing with distance education and instructional technology. Simonson has considerable experience working with domestic and international businesses and industries, especially on projects related to instructional technology, virtual schools, and distance education. Technology planning, distance education/virtual school policy development and effective design of online instruction are current projects. He is editor of the Quarterly Review of Distance Education, Distance Learning Journal, and Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers presented at the Annual Conventions of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. He has won the award for most outstanding research in the field of distance education presented by the United States Distance Learning Association. Most recently he has been an external evaluator South Dakota’s Connecting the Schools and Digital Dakota Network projects, and is a consultant for the U.S. Army Research Institute. Simonson was honorably discharged as a Captain from the United States Marine Corps (R).