Sherry, L. (1995). Issues in Distance Learning. International Journal of Distance Education.

During the summer of 1994, before I actually joined the Ph.D. program, Scott Grabinger offered me a summer internship with the Pacific Mountain Network (PMN). The project was to conduct a training needs assessment for teachers who wished to incorporate distance education into their classrooms. It was funded by a Star Schools Grant.

The first task, which took approximately half the allotted time, was to conduct a search of relevant literature about distance education, and to write a review of it. Using a previous literature review by Schlosser and Anderson (1994) as my foundation, I expanded the review to incorporate new information from journal articles, abooks, interim reports from various other distance learning projects, contacts from professional conferences, and contacts I had made over the Internet. This process introduced me to online scholarly discourse, which has persisted ever since. I have included some e-mail correspondence about this literature review in the Inservice/Consultation/Teaching portfolio product (hard copy).

That fall, I took my first seminar at UCD - IT 6710, with Brent Wilson. I continued to work on the literature review, which Karen Myers then peer-reviewed for me. I submitted it to the International Journal of Educational Telecommunications (IJET), where it was subsequently published. It also appeared as a reprint in Educational Technology Review.

Besides being cited by many researchers throughout the global educational community, this paper is now being used as required reading at USF Tampa (my alma mater!), in the Introduction to Instructional Technology course presently taught by Dr. Jim White (head of the doctoral program in IT) and Dr. Frank Breit (my advisor at USF).

Sherry, L., & Wilson, B. (1996). Supporting Human Performance Across Disciplines: A Converging of Roles and Tools. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 9(4), 19-36.

This paper was published in Performance Improvement Quarterly, a refereed journal. Originally, it started out as one of the ten sections to be included in the literature review of emerging trends in instructional design, with each member of Brent Wilson's spring 1996 doctoral lab contributing a section. However, as I continued to search the eclectic literature base that was related in any way, shape, or form to performance support, my section of the class effort grew into a full-fledged literature review of its own. After I submitted several revised drafts to Brent Wilson, he agreed (thankfully!) to be a co-author, provided I submit it to a reputable journal.

Since the paper was published, it has been cited by several professors. Other people have been linking to it from their home pages, as well.

There was a lit review encapsulated in the BVIP final report. A draft paper describing the BVIP report is at Evaluation of The Boulder Valley Internet Project: A Case Study. Based on my presentation of the BVIP at the AECT conference in February 1997, Patrick Jenlink, our panel moderator, asked me to write a synthesis paper that built upon this lit review. I intend to use the new paper, An Integrated Technology Adoption and Diffusion Model for the 1998 AECT conference, as part of a panel on Internet adoption/diffusion research, moderated by Dan Surry.

From my reflections on the BVIP, I realized that it does not fit very well into the Rogers model - it is much more dynamic and systemic. Moreover, there is a very close tie between the learning process and the adoption process. I have fleshed out this connection in the paper - especially in the section called the learning/adoption trajectory.

I have also discussed this paper with Joseph Hawkins via e-mail (another researcher in Maryland), Andy Topper at the University of Michigan (a doctoral student whose work has been paralleling mine over the past two years), Patrick Jenlink, and Ann Shore, in addition to Dan Surry. From these conversations, both face-to-face at AERA and via e-mail, I planned to conduct a symposium at next year's AERA meeting on "adoption and diffusion of K-12 telecommunications: theory into practice". I proposed a symposium based on these ideas for AERA. It was not accepted, but the original paper was accepted by AECT for the 1998 conference in St. Louis, as part of Dan Surry's panel presentation.

Back to Home Page