Distance education courses involve two core activities by the learners:
- Independent study of course materials and resources—the courseware that makes up
the physical, mediated content of the course
- Interaction with other course participants (tutors, instructors, other learners,
resource people).
Different devices may be used for courseware delivery and for interpersonal
interaction, but the backbone technologies along which the signals travel are often the
same. With the continuing trend toward widespread use of electronic, or digital,
media—and toward the convergence of broadcasting, computing, and telecommunications
technologies—more and more types of information are transmitted using the same
backbone technologies. Digital systems, which transmit all information as bits (BInary
digiTs), can send different types of information (text, numerical data, sound, images)
down the same channel at the same time, or across networks that use several different
communication channels. (In order of increasing bandwidth, or "pipe size," these
channels include ISDN, fiber optics, cable, and communications satellites.) As
communication between computers grows, so does the role of the Internet—the backbone
of the worldwide computer communication network, with signals passing through several of
these channels. The Internet's role is growing no less in distance education.
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