Getting Distance Learning to a Tipping Point Ideas from Malcolm Gladwell

Getting Distance Learning to a Tipping Point Ideas from Malcolm Gladwell

Stephen Asunka

According to Gladwell (2002), social phenomena such as fashion trends, crime rates, teenage smoking, infectious diseases etc. often witness, at some particular point in time, a sudden and dramatic turn in activity, catapulting them into epidemic proportions. This tipping point of social epidemics is often attributed to one or more factors. For example when in the 1990s, crime rate in New York City suddenly dropped over 60% in 5 years, the New York City police attributed it to effective policing strategies. Criminologists on the other hand cited the decline in illicit drug trade as the main reason, whilst economists pointed to the improvement of the city's economy. Though each reason given was true to some extent, a critical analysis revealed that, none of them, either in isolation or together with the others, could wholly account for the dramatic drop in crime rate (Gladwell, 2002). So what happened?

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