The Language Teacher

Mastering Distance Learning

Andrew Barfield
& Katsura Haruko
Teacher Education N-SIG

For the fourth and final column in this Teacher Education series, we look at the personal experiences of JALT members who decided to do a Master's degree through Distance Learning.

These days, peer support groups, library resources, all-year available residential tutors in Japan, the internet, and possibilities of residential study in this country characterize the competitive edge in the marketing of master's degrees through distance learning. But what do the people that do such degrees make of their experiences? To find out, we share our thoughts on responses to a distance learning questionnaire that we distributed earlier this year through jaltcall, the tesl-l job list, and through Teacher Talking To Teacher, the newsletter of the Teacher Education N-SIG.

General Considerations: Cost, Peer Support, Employer Support

Not surprisingly, most respondents saw their decision to enroll in a master's degree through distance learning as a necessary career move in a tightening job market, where the opportunity to further their education and to upgrade their qualifications while staying employed was one of two decisive factors. The other was money. Doing a master's degree in this way is less costly than studying full-time for a year abroad: people reported an average outlay of 1.5 million yen over two years on tuition fees, books, study materials, and course-related travel. All respondents considered this money well spent, but because of the variation in costs reported (1 million to 2.5 million yen), we recommend that interested readers check carefully what support services different universities provide for their distance students. Are you, for example, the type of person who wants mainly to study alone, or do you wish to have regular contact with other students doing the same course? According to our respondents, some institutions -- most notably the School of International Training in Vermont, U.S.A. and Aston University in the U.K. -- put a high premium on peer support groups in Japan. In fact, Aston will only run its course if a local resource centre can be accessed and if there are several people in the same area doing the degree concurrently. This is undoubtedly a benefit if it suits your personality, schedule and learning style -- but such a programme can involve a greater commitment of money, travel and time than programmes at other institutions which are relatively less intensive for people in Japan. And it may be uncomfortably demanding for those who confidently prefer to go it alone.

Employer support was reported as mostly positive. Some employers gave time off for exams, paid their employees to attend conferences, or allowed people to leave early to attend classes during vacation periods. Others provided moral support but did little to ease teaching schedules during busy parts of the course, as one high school teacher reported. At the other end of the scale, one distance learning student had to conceal the fact he was doing a master's course for fear of his job security. If you are interested in doing such a distance degree, then be sure to check carefully what support your employer is likely to provide. Consider also whether your own work and study schedules might combine to create bottleneck pressure periods for you, and whether you can negotiate in advance a less demanding work schedule.

Specific Considerations: Course Work, Exams, Time

Some distance-teaching institutions may not include exam-based assessment, while with others this form of assessment may make up to 40% of the total. Where the exam component is heavy, and where exams can be sat in Japan, the peer support group plays an important role in doing course work and preparing for exams, as one respondent noted:

For three months before each of the exams, seven of us in Tokyo met every weekend. . . . We would each do the required reading and work on informal tasks set by the university before meeting each week. Through discussion we were able to check each other's understanding, and ensure that no one was going "off the rails." We also did supplementary reading from different sources: it was useful to compare the reading we had done and find new sources. If the group felt that it could not find a satisfactory answer to one of the problems, an e-mail was sent to the relevant university staff member, asking for guidance. This approach ensured that the reading got done each week, as no one wanted to let the group down.

Within the varied balance reported by our respondents, course assignments came in as a minimum of 40% of work done for a distance master's degree. But how much time do people spend each week on their studies? A minimum of 10 hours was mentioned by most. Some calculated that they spent as much as three hours a day every day, with this increasing to another 8-10 hours over each weekend; others reported a steady weekly minimum of 10 hours, then long periods of low activity combined with intensive vacation work of up to 60 hours a week. One respondent sold a car in order to have more time for reading; others made adjustments through telling their friends and spouses strictly when they were or were not available:

Put the rest of your life on hold, beg as much understanding from your spouse as you can . . . and get down to it.

Although most reported a high level of self-motivation and interest, being self-disciplined with time was a recurrent theme in the answers to our survey. So, look carefully at your own time management and commitments, and plan accordingly if you do start a distance master's degree.

Reading Resources

One respondent commented that accessing libraries in Japan was a bothersome and time-consuming business -- "storage houses rather than places of learning" was how this person put it. For those people not working in universities or colleges with large libraries, the local resources provided by the distance-teaching institution were therefore a welcome solution. Another respondent reported obtaining a letter of introduction from the master's degree university so as to be able to use libraries here in Japan that would otherwise have been inaccessible. So, we'd advise you to consider carefully what library resources are available for you near to where you live and work, as well as to check what on-line facilities the host institution offers and how much time and money it may cost you to use the internet for your course reading.

But it's not just a question of having all the reading resources readily available. Does the host institution provide prioritised reading guidelines, or does it implicitly expect you to read everything that is mentioned on a reading list? From our survey, it's clear that some do and some don't: one respondent noted, for example, that it helped to have readings marked as "background," "key" or "further," as well as to receive from the distance-teaching institution "starter packs" for each particular area of study. Another took time to request in advance the list of required readings in order to make an early start and cover everything in time. So, here we recommend that you look carefully at what ongoing support different distance learning master programmes offer -- not just in terms of individual academic supervision, but also in terms of more practical, pro-active modules and components for nurturing independent study and research.

Feedback

Though being on-line with e-mail or fax was reported as an optional requirement for admission into programmes, it was nevertheless seen by many respondents as a particularly important part of completing the dissertation and getting relatively quick responses to individual problems and queries. Nothing, according to our survey, is more frustrating and annoying than studying at distance, sending in work for feedback and then facing long delays. Are the research criteria clearly laid out by the institution? Can drafts be sent in and feedback guaranteed within a reasonable period? Will time be allowed for re-writes? These, in our opinion, are also questions worth investigating in whatever programme you might be considering.

Surprising Lessons

There is, without doubt, a great sense of challenge and satisfaction in the distance learning experiences that our respondents went through. Challenged by how much they had to cover and by how little they knew at first, they found satisfaction in different ways: self-discipline in making time for their studies through each week; sitting and passing exams years after finishing their initial schooling; learning and then becoming fluent in the different meta-languages of the fields that they had chosen; gathering data, analysing, and writing a well-researched postgraduate dissertation; making lifelong friends; gaining a real sense of self-accomplishment. In the words of one: "Very empowering; builds self-sufficiency. Good stuff."

Andrew Barfield teaches at Tsukuba University in Ibaraki-ken and is the 1996 coordinator of the Teacher Education N-SIG. He can be contacted at: Foreign Language Centre, Tsukuba University, Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken. 305. e-mail: andyman@sakura.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp

Katsura Haruko teaches at Hokkai Gakuen University in Hokkaido and is the 1996 translation coordinator of the Teacher Education N-SIG. She can be contacted at: 16-15 Kitanosawa 2-chome, Minami-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido. 005. e-mail: harubo@msv.elsa.hokkai-s-u.ac.jp