Why do people still attend community theater productions?

One of the courses in which I'm enrolled has had a conference on the relative merits of asynchronous versus synchronous technologies for distance education (DE). As a slow and error prone typist I start with a bias against the main means of communicating online, though the approach does seem to have potential and appears a permanent fixture in the future of education. This Conference demonstrated enough advantages that I now see that both technologies can be integrated to provide a positive learning experience at a distance.

Some of the readings, however, seemed to be written by advocates rather than investigators of DE and if not directly then by subtext disparaged face-to-face (f2f) in-classroom instruction. (Moore and Kearsley, 2005; Kurz and Sponder, 2010; Heider, et al, 2009). At first I thought that may be true for some subject matter, but not for quantitative reasoning (aka, statistics and analytics). An informal poll supported my belief that students who would prefer to take quantitative courses online are likely a minority. So, if online education is going to continue to grow, it will require some creativity in how quantitative reasoning is taught, what supports exist when it is taught, and what pedagogical innovations can provide the experience of thinking in quantitative concepts without necessarily using symbolic mathematics to do so. Our readings (Bates and Poole, 2003) emphasize the need for more research and evidence to support when to use technology and when to use face-to-face to provide an optimal learning experience.

Blogging offers, in theory, an opportunity for networking among students in course and between students and external persons with domain expertise (McGreal and Elliott, 2008). This short blogging experience will be my experiment to see if that is correct. As someone who has grown up with hard copy books and actually owned a slide rule in high school, the multiple technologies and media can be overwhelming – I want to just stop all of the e-communication and pick up the phone and talk with someone. Carr (2008) asks Is Google Making Us Stupid?, noting the “twitch-speed” at which those who have come of age with internet technologies as the normal.
Which brings me back to the questions of why do people choose to attend community theater when they could rent a video and watch the same performance, supported by more elaborate sets ad production resources, in the comfort of their own homes? The answer to this applies to DE, and particularly to mathematics DE.

What do we know about evidence-based learning theory that would guide us in drawing the correct lessons from support for community theater? The attendees are not universally of my age group, so it is not necessarily a generation issue. The economics actually work against going to the theater, even though it is a bargain for live entertainment. In a time of H1N1 scares and public health awareness, staying home may be safer.
Recently I read in Bates and Poole (2003) about Professor William Harkness’ award-winning Stat 200 initiative. Dr. Harkness’ work was done under a Pew Grant, specifically the Program in Course Redesign, focused on a required statistics course that enrolled more than 2,800 students. The revision was “intended to make the material more relevant to students by shifting the role of the instructor from strictly a lecturer to facilitator of self-directed learning. The redesigned course stresses hands-on practice activities using technology“ (http://www.psu.edu/dept/itscss/news/nlsp03/stat200.html ). His evaluation of the revised mixed-mode course demonstrated that it was less costly per student and based on online quizzes, students are performing progressively better.

I think that while the technological advances have improved support for DE, and extended opportunities for many learners, it is not yet ready to replace the experience of sharing live experiences in real time. Close ... but not yet.

Bates, A. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Heider, K., Laverick, D. & Bennett, B. (2009). Digital Textbooks: The Next Paradigm Shift in Higher Education?. AACE Journal. 17 (2), pp. 103-112. Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved October, 1, 2009 from http://www.editlib.org/p/27054

Kurtz, G. & Sponder, B. (2010). SoTL in online education: Strategies and practices for using new media for teaching and learning online. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning4 (1).

McGreal R. & Elliott, M. (2008). Technologies of Online Learning (E-learning). In T. Anderson. T. (Ed.), Theory and practice of online learning (Second Edition). (pp. 143-165).

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance Education: A Systems View. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.