Michael/Terran's master's project; SL and higher ed

Now that my MA project is done, I think this a good space and opportunity to share some findings. I'll start with my end-of-project reflections, a chunk at a time. Please feel free to fill in some blanks in my understanding, or correct faulty assumptions or preconceived notions.

When I set about to discover a topic for my final Masters project, I floundered about well into the first few weeks of my proposal writing workshop without a clear idea about what sort of in-depth study would keep me interested and, in the spirit of SoTL, contribute to the body of knowledge in the field of higher education. I remembered several pieces of advice that were offered to me throughout the past three-plus years by my instructors and advisors that I used to guide my choice. I was advised to keep my eye on a specific area of interest throughout my graduate student years in the hopes that the things I chose to study and write about would provide material for later research. I was also advised to look at notions that I was completely ignorant of and those that I might not be in agreement with in order to insure that I would study with a keen curiosity, a lack of arrogance, and an argument in mind. As I looked back at the ideas that I had chosen to study and write about, I remembered again how I was drawn to explore the notion of distance learning and its role in higher education. As a first-year graduate student I recall feeling a righteous indignation at the rise of DL as a substitute for in-class learning, aware as I thought I was of the benefits of the face-to-face in-class experience of learning, where students would be in immediate and simultaneous proximity with each other and the instructor. The richness of the environment and the immediacy of these presences were, I thought, integral to the education of the whole student, and essential for the traditional-age college student who needed to be immersed in the brick and mortar learning community in order to mature and develop as students and young adults.