Excellent Study Skills and Information Literacy

From the question and scenario that had been given, we knew that to become an excellent distance learning is not an easy task. In this case study we will identify which study skills are important to distance learning students after we identify what actually the challenges that distance learner have to face. What is actually defining distance learning? According to Doug Valentine (2002) distance learning is actually when students and teacher are separated by space but not separated by time. They communicate with live video conference to make the learning process happen. Distance learning nowadays had change in so many ways, the obvious different between distance learning and in campus learning is that distance learning had limited amount of learning time and space. We will discuss further in ‘challenge in distance learning’ below.

Definition of skill is proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training experience. In this context skills can be define as knowledge, discipline, abilities, attitude and experience. In order to be a excellent distance learner, one must have this sets of skills so that at the end of the day, one can get high grade.

Next, we start with the challenges that distance learner had to face due to progress in information, communication and technology. First according to Doug Valentine (2002) the challenge that distance learner had is quality of instruction. As we know that in most of distance learning institute or courses, the teacher/lecturer is not as the same quality of in campus’s teachers/lectures. Statistic shown that instructor or teacher/lecturer had conflicting attitudes about teaching distance education. Every each of them are willing to teach another course right after they had finish one if the course are equal or lower quality than the classes they taught on campus. As a result instructor comes to teach unprepared. In the other hand, normally distance learners have weekend classes. This cause a problem to instructor to committed with the responsible because they already had classes taught on weekdays. It become more difficult to give full commitment if the instructor already had own family. We knew that distance learner have a limited time and space to complete all chapters in a semester. When this happened distance learner will get limited information about the subject they learn. Though we have the technology to gather information, a quality instructor is extremely needed to enhance the learning ability among the distance learner at the very optimum. Remember, “Technology does not teach students; effective teachers do” Palloff and Pratt (2000).

Second challenge that distance learner had to face is lack of the ability to use the technology. Distance learning is actually more to a self taught process. Distance learner can’t depend on their teachers to give information about the subjects they learn or assignment they have to