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CHAPTER ONE Introduction University study is seen as the epitome of formal education, however, access to higher education has been problematic for a variety of reasons, often related to status and wealth as much as geography and climate. Distance education is a set of strategies, typically technology-mediated, intended to solve specific problems of access, but there appears to be a lack of clarity as to the nature of the problems and therefore uncertainty about the solutions applied.

I used the grounded theory method developed by Glaser and Strauss (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to analyze interviews and observations from learners, teachers, administrators, educational consultants, and others engaged in technology-mediated higher education. I also analyzed related documents, minutes of meetings, proceedings of conferences, various recordings, and online resources to provide richer theoretical concepts. I sought an explanatory theory for patterns of behavior that would have predictive power for the substantive area of distance education and be useful to policy makers, educational and others. The theory that has emerged not only offers an explanation of these patterns but is also a general theory, relevant to problem-solving social behavior in contexts other than distance education.

My personal experience with post-secondary education extended across a number of institutions and through a variety of modalities. Born and raised in a small Canadian prairie town, I received my elementary and high school education in the traditional classroom, spending a period of my high school at a residential school for boys.

My mother was my first and best teacher; a career school teacher, who for years took correspondence courses. Her efforts paid off when she attained her degree in education and was eligible for advanced teaching assignments. Beginning, at age seventeen, as a teacher in one-room school houses, she ended her formal teaching career as a highly respected special education teacher. She continues to teach me and others as a natural part of her being. I moved from my home town to study at a traditional face-to-face university in a major city where my interest in human behavior attracted me to neuro-psychology and psycho-pharmacology. I participated in a program conducting quantitative scientific laboratory research, testing antidepressant medication by studying the responses of rats with electrodes implanted in the limbic centers of the brain. While I enjoyed working in the laboratory environment, the idea that observations of animal behavior were being used to explain human behavior was bothersome to me. After attaining my undergraduate degree, I worked in addictions treatment, in a variety of settings. I worked in a major psychiatric facility where my responsibilities included diagnostic testing of patients in an alcohol rehabilitation ward and a chronic ward for individuals in the various stages of alcoholic dementia.

As life circumstances changed, I was involved in a family business enterprise. My interest in formal education persisted, but as I lived and worked in a rural area, I was restricted by the lack of access to a university. When an opportunity arose to participate in a university extension program, I acquired an additional credential in Vocational and Technical Education. The program was adapted to meet the needs of working professionals who wanted to acquire a teaching credential and, in part, it was offered in the evenings and in summer sessions. I had to travel a great deal to study for my certificate, driving four hundred kilometers twice a week to attend lectures, through often hazardous, Canadian prairie driving conditions. I did this for two and one half years, as there was still the expectation that all students attend face-to-face classes. Computers, e-mail and word processors were coming into use and I used both extensively. However, the use of the Internet was in its earliest stages and access in the rural center where I lived was strictly dial-up and very limited. Upon completion of my education certificate, I worked for nine years in a community college teaching vocational and technical subjects. While teaching, I completed Masters level graduate studies, specializing in college education. This degree was completed with a cohort and again involved driving four hundred kilometers round trip for classes. Advances in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems resulted in much more reliance on e-mail and electronic documents in this program. Toward the end of my Masters program, I took a course in web page development and HTML. I started my first web log in 2003 and it is still active.

I began to use ICT and used computer-based technology in my teaching practice, in a context where computers hadn’t been used previously. I had to work around various barriers and limitations, including the resistance of those who managed the institutional computer systems. As a result of my interest in ICT and my advanced credentials, I began to teach and mentor others in a Certificate program for Adult Vocational educators using web-based ICT. I explored and adapted web-based applications to support professional development and to model alternative delivery mechanisms. I worked for a period as administrator of a consortium of universities and colleges that delivered higher education courses and programs at a distance, using ICT. I also designed and delivered a graduate level ICT course for a Master of Education program.

Overall, my experience with education has involved a great deal of effort to overcome barriers to access. The proliferation of online learning and web-mediated social networks used in support of natural lifelong learning is marvelous from my perspective. Currently, I participate in online learning networks that incorporate new affordances and transcend institutional education. Such affordances include blogs, wikis, podcasts, online videos, RSS, collaborative bookmarking, micro-blogging and virtual environments. Many of these affordances did not exist five years ago but have since revolutionized many aspects of society. Distance education, from the days of my mother’s mailed-in correspondence courses to the radio broadcast schools that served many rural and remote communities, has long been available. Computer-mediated and Internet-based programs of study have almost entirely replaced earlier forms of distance education and exponential technological advances in ICT in the last decade have made online education an increasingly attractive option.
 * Substantive Area of Interest **

One of the purported problems with distance education is attributed, in part, to the loneliness and isolation of independent study (Krajnac, 1988; Purnell, Cuskelly, & Danaher, 1996). Such social factors are thought to be responsible for high attrition rates, although program and course design issues may be as much at fault when students fail to persist. (Moore & Kearsley, 2005; Poellhuber, Chonienne, & Karsenti, 2008). Much research activity has been directed toward minimizing the sense of distance in distance education (Arnold, 1999). Many practitioners and institutions have consciously stopped referring to distance education by that name, preferring: distributed education, computer-mediated education, technology-mediated learning, blended learning, etc. One of the concerns in the field of distance education is that distance has a negative and undesirable influence on learning (Russell, 2005). My initial interest in this area was to examine the perception of //distance// in distance education. In conducting the research for this dissertation, I was determined to use a systematic process to develop a theory by which some of the existing assumptions about behavior patterns in distance education could be examined.

//Why Grounded Theory Method?//

I chose to use grounded theory method because it offered an opportunity to generate theories in a comparatively new field of human endeavor, where adequate theory is in short supply. As Hanson (1958) remarked: "In a growing research discipline, inquiry is directed not to rearranging old facts and explanations into more elegant formal patterns, but rather to the discovery of new patterns of explanation." (p.2)

Hansen, writing at a time when new discoveries were being made in the field of particle physics, observed that many theoretical propositions, the foundations of the science of physics, were inadequate. Similarly, the field of web-based, online education is comparatively new and emerging so rapidly that the conventional theories about education are inadequate. Typically, computer-mediated distance education has been a technical overlay on top of traditional educational methods, following an industrial education model (Wallace, 2007).

Saba (2000) observed that much research into distance education used quasi-experimental empirical methods and compared distance education to conventional education. While this descriptive research has had value, it is inadequate to explain many features of emerging educational paradigms and pedagogical practices. He recommended techniques such as narrative discourse and in-depth interview analysis to generate new theories guiding inquiry into distance education in its own right. This activity generated some testable theory and enabled program designers to implement meaningful changes. These theories, predicated on traditional understandings of institutional education are, however, beginning to lose their explanatory power. Ubiquitous computer networks and low cost universal communication systems have allowed regular people to gain access to information and resources long considered the property of institutions. No longer are educational institutions able to function as the exclusive generators, owners and dispensers of human knowledge. Internet based information and communication systems and the social networks that have emerged through them are changing education as they have changed just about every field of human endeavor.

Some institutions have attempted to adopt ICT and web-based approaches on a wholesale level and develop entirely new innovative approaches to education using self-directed study. These efforts have embraced various theoretical understandings of learning, technology-mediated learning in particular. Philips (2005) categorized a number of technology-mediated approaches and describes the underlying pedagogical assumptions. He also points out a large disjuncture between espoused theory and the theory-in-use that guides much of current practice in technology-mediated education. There is a distinction… "… between the deep-learning, student-centred, outcomes-based approach which is espoused in the literature, and the surface-learning, teacher-centred, content-based approach currently used in many universities." (p.3)

The rapid development of the Internet and multimedia have, however, exceeded the capacity of current theory. We live in exponential times and there is a deep need to provide a theoretical basis to guide the response to incredibly rapid shifts. The need for new theories to guide action in a rapidly changing universe and a diminished confidence in traditional empirical approaches suggest that new innovative and creative methods of generating knowledge must be explored. Grounded theory method may be ideally suited to this task. The grounded theory method offers a means whereby the introduction of innovations in the field of distance education can be guided by robust theory derived from adequate and relevant data.

Barney Glaser (1964) developed the constant comparative method of analysis, a process of inquiry that did not rely on the deductive verification of logically elaborated theories. Glaser further developed the grounded theory method in association with Anselm Strauss, in the course of discovering basic social processes relating to the experience of death and dying (Glaser & Strauss, 1965). A seminal work on the grounded theory method, //The Discovery of Grounded Theory// was published in 1967 (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Glaser has continued to develop the grounded theory method through numerous publications (Glaser, 1978, 1992, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2007). Glaser continues to teach and write on the grounded theory method.

The grounded theory method has the capacity to produce powerful explanatory theories. Pape (1964) provides an excellent illustration of the power of the grounded theory method in her investigation of the issue of nurse retention in health care settings. Quantitative data indicated that there was a high turn-over rate and institutions wanted to know why. What emerged from Pape’s analysis was that nurses were not suffering from exhaustion or dissatisfaction with their work but were demonstrating a pattern of behavior that Pape called “touring”. Highly skilled nurses were in demand all over the world and nurses took advantage of that to “see the world”. The theory of touring provided a very powerful but surprising explanation for a pattern of behavior that may not have been revealed by using an exclusively quantitative approach. Similarly the analysis of the notion of distance in distance education will benefit from an approach that can generate a theory from data collected from a highly emergent field of interest.

Grounded theory method is not an approach that appeals to all. Some researchers do not have the capacity, patience or desire to perform such research. The grounded theory method process makes large demands on the creativity and imagination of the analyst and requires a specific mind set that is able to cope with unconventional sources. Often positivist research is done simply because it is easier than interpretive forms of research (Shankar & Goulding, 2001). One is reminded of the oft repeated story of the late-night reveler who was searching for his lost car keys under the street light rather than in the actual location where he lost his keys - his logic was that the light was better there. In this analysis I have attempted to look outside the circle of light that has been offered by previous theories of distance education.

Grounded theory method embodies the notion of a culture of inquiry and is agnostic in its consideration of all forms of data, qualitative and quantitative. It is predicated on the assumption that data are “theory-laden” and proper examination of data with an abductive inferential approach will yield theory that is the best fit explanation for phenomena. While approaches to academic research have been polarized along the naturalist/objectivist lines, rapprochement has occurred in many fields and the grounded theory method is uniquely designed to support a more holistic perspective of inquiry (Erikan & Roth, 2006).

Why Grounded Theory is Suited to this Inquiry In the case of web-based information and communication systems, society is experiencing an unprecedented rate of change. Changes in society are reflected in the changes in education, particularly respecting the adoption of technology. Critical scholar practitioners, with the ability to develop theories explaining these changes, are needed to better guide policy and action. The grounded theory method allows for the generation of explanatory theory which provides a "controllable theoretical foothold" for action (Glaser & Strauss, 1965, p.268). The purpose of generating grounded theory is to provide the "man in the know" with substantive theories that allow him to control and understand his area of action, providing theoretical "traction for action" (Glaser 1978, p. 13). The nature of grounded theory method is particularly suited to emergent fields where the knowledge base is lacking or established knowledge is used in an atypical fashion (Glaser, 1992). In the case of distance education, as with all technology-mediated communication networks and information systems, there is ample information about what is occurring, but less useful theory explaining why. Analyzing aspects of distance education with the grounded theory method will expose patterns of social behavior useful to persons knowledgeable in this area. While a grounded theory so developed will be valid in its own right, it could also allow for further study of distance education, if indicated, and the development of interventions and strategies to adapt and make accommodations for change.

In choosing the research methodology for this dissertation I was faced with a number of choices and decisions. I was introduced to the grounded theory method early in my doctoral studies at Fielding Graduate University, participating in a number of courses, workshops, seminars, and training sessions dedicated to learning the method. I enrolled in two extended grounded theory workshops in Calgary, Alberta under the direction of Dr. Paul Wishart. These sessions featured respected grounded theorists employing a number of variations of the grounded theory. I attended a grounded theory symposium sponsored by the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology in Banff, Alberta in 2007, where proponents of the major variants of the grounded theory method generously shared their insights, experience and expertise. The proceedings of this symposium have been published by Morse et. al. (2009). I have also been trained in the use of Computer Assisted Quantitative Data Analysis Software, specifically Atlas.ti. Based on recommendations to avoid “technology entrapment” (Holton, 2007, p. 287) I decided to use computer programs in a very limited way for this analysis. The method used to produce this dissertation was based in classical grounded theory method, and principally learned under the mentorship of Dr. Odis Simmons, one of the pioneers and architects of the method.

I found that my ability to use grounded theory method to analyze data, conceptualize, and generate theory matured as I worked my way through the process. As I read and re-read Glaser, I discovered ideas that I missed in first reading. Also, consistent with the reports of other students of grounded theory method, I had to learn a lot of the nuances of the method by doing it (Wishart, 2009). Gathering data, writing memos, theoretical sampling and applying the constant comparative analysis has given me a personal reference point and has clarified many aspects of the process.