David Williard, M.Ed.

I have a long and abiding interest in the field of distance education. My childhood experiences include a Billy Graham Bible correspondence course and a homestudy course in taxidermy. The latter training resulted in a wall-to-wall menagerie of eyeless animal ghouls (I couldn't afford the glass eyes), which my mother eventually discarded. My more formal investigation of distance education began in the 1980's when I enrolled in an Associate of Science correspondence course in electronics through the Cleveland Institute of Electronics. Before finishing the course, I secured a job in the electronics industry. Unfortunately, my employer, Allied Signal, did not offer tuition assistance for correspondence work, therefore I took identical coursework again at the local community college. This provided me with an ideal vantage point from which to compare distance versus classroom education. In this case, the correspondence course was more comprehensive, more hands-on, with a unique, synergistic incorporation of the mathematics into the electronics content. However, most of the distance learning with whcih I come in contact leaves much to be desired in terms of theory-based design and especially instructor presence. I am a Postal Training Instructor at the National Center for Employee Development in Norman, Oklahoma, Currently, I am working to complete a Ph.D. in Adult and Higher Education at the University of Oklahoma.