Capturing Definitions for a Sustainable Distance Education Ecosystem through an Online Delphi Study

Introduction

Within an ecological perspective, the ecosystem concept has been associated with education and learning by various authors (Brown, 2000; Richardson, 2002; Jones, 2008). Matching the ecosystem definition which states that the living community and the nonliving environment function together as an ecological system or ecosystem (Odum & Barret, 2005), a learning ecosystem is described as “a collection of overlapping communities of interest (virtual), cross-pollinating with each other, constantly evolving, and largely self-organizing” (Brown, 2000). In a learning ecosystem formal, social, informal and traditional learning intersect and learning “just happens” (Jones, 2008) providing the presence of diverse learning options (Brown, 2000). A learning ecosystem matrix with reference to studying, teaching, projects and exercises quadrants based on instruction delivery and navigation control is also presented (Richardson, 2002). In terms of distance education, the concept of ecology and ecosystems are referred as frameworks for defining the operational components and processes (Zachry, 2000; McCalla, 2004; Frielick, 2004; Chang & Guetl, 2007; Uden & Damiani, 2007; Dong, 2009; Pata, 2011; Reyna, 2011; Nasr, 2011; Johnson, 2012). These frameworks can be grouped as follows:

• 1.

  The Learning Ecosystem: Encompassing up-to-date information and content,

• 2.

  The Teaching Ecosystem: Encompassing complex interactions between the learner, interface, instructor and content,

• 3.

  The Digital Ecosystem: Focusing on the rapid growth in digital technology,

• 4.

  The Learning Environment Ecosystem: Covering content providers, consultants and infrastructure. Moreover, the future of distance education is mentioned to be feasible only if these ecosystems are well understood and analyzed (Dillon & Hallett, 2001) and the need for developing models that support the development and sustainability of these ecosystems are underlined (Uden & Damiani, 2007; Issa, Issa & Chang 2011).