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).
Interaction in distance education has traditionally taken place at periodic
face-to-face tutorials in local study centers or during longer contact sessions or
residential schools. But an increasingly varied range of technologies for interaction at a
distance are now available that can complement or even substitute for face-to-face
interaction. In some cases the same technology—such as videoconferencing,
audiographic conferencing, or the Web—might be used to both support interactions and
transmit content, but in most cases different technologies are used for these purposes.
The communications technologies used to support interaction in distance education can
be divided into two broad categories:
- Asynchronous (or deferred-time) technologies, which do not require participants to be
present simultaneously. Examples include postal correspondence, electronic mail, and
computer conferencing.
- Synchronous (or real-time) technologies, which require participants to interact at the
same time, generally prearranged. These technologies include telephony, audioconferencing,
audiographic conferencing, videoconferencing, and multi-user object-oriented environments
(MOOs).
Recently distance education systems have begun to use technologies that combine
asynchronous and synchronous communication with computer-based courseware, such as
multimedia desktop conferencing and integrated Web environments.
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