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Terry Anderson is a pioneer of Distance Education and Educational Technology. He is a teacher and researcher and is widely published in the field of Distance Education and Educational Technology.

Dr Terry Anderson is Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at Canada’s Athabasca University. Anderson has over three decades of experience in providing instruction in Educational Technology at the tertiary level. He has researched and published widely in the field of distance education and educational technology and is a frequent contributor to professional journals dedicated to the same fields. Anderson was born and raised in Southern Alberta, Canada in a nuclear family consisting of him and his three brothers which encouraged his love for outdoor escapades. He currently resides in Edmonton, Canada with Susan Anderson his wife of forty years.

Terry Anderson’s self-professed and modest claim to fame is that he organised the first ever virtual conference in 1993 for the International Council for Distance Education which ran on UseNet, Bit Net and various listservs. His progress in academia is far more progressive and influential as Anderson’s contribution to the field of distance education spans over thirty years (Anderson, 2018).^[1]

Terry Anderson spent fifteen years as a ‘back to the land’ farmer and woodworker in Northern Alberta, Canada which later proved to be influential to his decision to pursue studies in the field of education as during this time he cited the need for education which would not be bounded by geographical locations. He obtained his first teaching job in an organization that had a responsibility to provide educational access to remote communities.  In addition to his interest to create new educational opportunities, Anderson also developed a profound interest in toys and technologies (Wheeler, 2014).^[2]

After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at the University of Alberta in 1973, Anderson taught Junior High School Mathematics and Industrial Arts in the Northlands School Division, Grouard, Alberta.  Spurred by his appreciation for the field of education, Anderson returned to the University of Alberta to complete a Bachelor of Education degree in Industrial Arts. He transitioned to providing instruction at the tertiary level in 1982 when he was employed as the Director of Computer Services at the Alberta Vocational College after completing his Master of Science degree in Computer Education at the University of Oregon. Five years later in 1987, he was appointed as the first Director of Contact North; a multi-institutional, distance education network situated at the Lakehead University in Thunder Bay (Anderson, 2018).^[1]

Despite being actively involved in the field of Education , Anderson became aware of a deficit in his knowledge of the historical and theoretical background of education. Consequently, he enrolled in a PhD program and in 1994 he graduated from the University of Calgary with a Doctorate in Educational Psychology with a specialty in Educational Computer Applications. His dissertation was entitled ‘Shared Cognition in Distance Education’ (Anderson, 2018).^[1]

Anderson’s years of contribution to the education profession was recognised when he was appointed as Associate Professor within the Faculty of Extension and Director of Academic technologies for Learning University of Alberta, a position that he held for a period of four years until he was subsequently appointed Professor of the Faculty Extension at the same university (Anderson, 2018).

In 2001, Terry Anderson’s devotion to the field of distance education was further realised when he was conferred as Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at the prestigious Athabasca University which is one of the world’s leading open education institutions. Anderson held the position of Professor until his retirement in 2015, when he was appointed as Professor Emeritus and Consultant; a position that he currently holds (Anderson, 2018).^[1]

In addition to his prowess in the field of education, Anderson is an acclaimed editor and frequent contributor to professional journals within the field of distant learning. He served for ten years as the Editor and is now Editor Emeritus of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) which is the most widely acclaimed journal in the field of Distance Learning. Anderson’s knowledge of distance education theory and practice is well renowned and has resulted in him being elected to serve on several national and international advisory committees with the Alberta and Canadian Governments, Portugal, and Spain. He also currently serves on editorial boards of several journals including Journal of Distance Education, Internet in Higher Education, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, among others (Eden Conference Area, n.d.).^[3]

From his early years working as a farmer, Terry Anderson envisioned an educational platform which would not be constricted to an individual’s geographic location – distance education. Most Anderson’s work over the span of his career has focused on research and publications on the role of interaction in ensuring a quality and satisfying distance educational experience, as well as constructing a working model for online learning.

Anderson’s Model of Online Education (2011)

Having spent much of his career in the provision of distance education Anderson sought to develop a model of online education. His eventual model explains that an online learning community could only be effective if it comprises four overlapping components namely, community-centered, knowledge-centered, learner-centered, and assessment-centered (Anderson, n.d.)^[4]. Anderson’s proposed features and importance of each component are outlined below.

• Learner-Centered: The contents of online learning environments must meet the needs of the learners. To achieve this directive instructors must acquaint themselves with their students’ prior knowledge including previously held misconceptions to create a more tailored and personal experience (Anderson, n.d.)^[4].

• Knowledge-Centered: Anderson acknowledges that the limitless resource of information that the internet provides may prove overwhelming to students. Thus, the onus is on instructors to assist students in honing and utilising their research skills to locate requisite knowledge (Anderson, n.d.)^[4].

• Assessment-Centered: Learning environments must include formative and summative evaluations for the purpose of offering motivation, information and feedback to both learners and teachers (Anderson, n.d.)^[4].

• Community-Centered: The main purpose of online learning environments is to facilitate learning; consequently, successful online communities must provide avenues for students to collaborate with the intention of creating and sharing new knowledge (Anderson n.d.^[4]).

Anderson’s Interaction Equivalency Theory (2004)

Anderson’s first research conclusion led to the formation of his Interaction Equivalency Theory which initiated due to his frustration at the difficulties often experienced by students and instructors on both gaining access to more costly technological tools and the time required to learn and effectively use them.

After conducting polls and research among his students during his various tenure in distance teaching, carefully considering the ongoing literature debate and Michael Moore’s notion of student-student, student-teacher and student-content interactions Anderson postulated that although interaction is essential in distant learning, it is transient, and each form may be substituted (Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010^[5]). The main features of Anderson’s theory are outlined in two theses:

• Thesis One: An effective and enriching formal learning experience may be achieved once one of the three forms of interaction (student-student, student-teacher, and student-content) exists at a high level. The remaining two may be offered in reduced scales or possibly eliminated without creating a deficiency in the quality of the learning experience (Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010).^[5]

• Thesis Two: High levels of more than one of these three interactions will provide an enriching learning experience although this experience may be less cost and time effective than that presented in thesis one (Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010)^[5]

While the theory’s proposal of elimination may suggest that only a singular mode of interaction is necessary, the basis of the theory is that all three interactions are equally important in providing effective learning experiences if one of them is at a high level and quality. As such, in some circumstance’s student-content interaction may be the most important, whereas student – student interaction may be most effective (Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010)^[5].

Anderson’s Interaction Equivalency Theory is considered as a major contributor to theories which aim to establish a balance between interaction and independence in educational contexts (Miyazoe, 2012^[6]).  

Community of Inquiry Theory (2000)

Anderson collaborated with fellow lecturers in the faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta; Randy Garrison, and Walter Archer to develop the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework. To support the newly established partly online graduate program in Communication and Technology, the research trio focused their endeavours towards developing a humanistic theoretical framework which would interconnect the human issues around common features of online learning such as text-based communication, issues which are common to this type of education and the overall cognitive goals of distance education, in addition to providing a framework for the incorporation of computer mediated technology in educational experiences (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2010)^[7].

The community of Inquiry theoretical framework posits a process of establishing an effective and enriching learning experience via the presence and expansion of three mutually dependent elements - social, cognitive, and teaching presence.

They defined social presence as the ability to share characteristics with a community to be able to communicate deliberately in an environment to form relationships through displaying their unique traits. The trio defined teaching presence as the “design, facilitation and direction’ of cognitive and social process to garner efficient educational outcomes. The social presence of the framework was defined as the extent to which learners can build and confirm meaning through continuous reflection and discourse (Garrison et al., 2010)^[7].

After procuring a research grant Anderson, Garrison and Archer initiated the process of validating their model. They developed and utilised tools through interviews, surveys, and other qualitative and quantitative designs to measure social presence in asynchronous text conferencing systems. Their research has been validated, extended, and quantified by numerous research which have established a strong relationship between social presence, student satisfaction and more effective learning outcomes (Garrison et al., 2010).^[7]

Terry Anderson has authored and co-authored numerous books and has also published widely in a variety of medium. A selection of his writings is listed below.

Books

Anderson, L. & Anderson, T. (2010). Online Conferences: Professional Development Tools for a networked Age. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, PA.

Anderson, T. (2008) Theory and practice of online learning 2nd Edition. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.

Anderson, T. & Elloumni, F. (Eds.) (2004). Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca: Athabasca University Press.

Anderson, T. & Kanuka, H. (2002). E-Research: Issues, Strategies and Methods. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Anderson, T. & Haughey, M. (1999). Networked learning: A workbook for workshop facilitators. Toronto: Roberts and Assoc.

Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2014). Teaching crowds: Learning and social media. Edmonton, Canada: Athabasca University Press.

Garrison, R & Anderson, T. (2003). E-Learning in the 21st Century: A framework for research and practice. London: Routledge

Haughey, M & Anderson T. (1997). Networked learning: The pedagogy of the Internet. Montreal,Chenelière: McGraw-Hill.

Zawacki-Richter, O., & Anderson, T. (Eds.). (2014). Online distance education – towards a research agenda. Athabasca, Edmonton, Canada: Athabasca University Press.

Peer Reviewed Publications

Anderson, T., Upton, L., Dron, J., & Malone, M. (2015). Social Interaction in Self-paced Distance Education. Open Praxis, http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/164/139.

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2016). Integrating Learning Management and Social Networking Systems (in Chinese). Journal of Distance Education in China, 492(1)

Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2014). On the Design of Social Media for Learning. Social Sciences, 3(3), 378-393. doi:10.3390/socsci3030378.

Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2014). The Distant Crowd: Transactional Distance and New Social Media Literacies. International Journal of Learning and Media 4(4). http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/IJLM_a_00104.

Miyazoe, T., Anderson, T., & Shinichi, S. (2014). “To-do-or-not-to-do dilemma” online: Blog and essay writing visualizations in a blended-format university English course. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 11, 165-182. http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v11s12014/miyazoe.pdf.

Miyazoe, T., & Anderson, T. (2015). Interaction equivalency in an OER, MOOC and informal learning era. Best of Eden 2013 Issue - EURODL. http://www.eurodl.org/?p=special&sp=articles&inum=7&article=695

Raidell, T. R., & Anderson, T. (2015). Are the mostly highly cited articles by researchers, the most read by practitioners? A bibliometric study of IRRODL. International Review of Open and Distance Learning, 16(2).

Wang, Z., Anderson, T., Chen, L., & Barbera, E. (2016). Interaction pattern analysis in cMOOCs based on the connectivist interaction and engagement framework. British Journal of Educational Technology, n/a-n/a. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12433.