Distance Education: Must it be ‘Out-of-Sight, Out-of- Mind ’ Education?

Distance educators, in theorising their practice, take as a starting point Michael Moore’s (1989) typology of learning interactions: learner- teacher, learner-learner and learner-content. Some might accept the suggestion of Hillman, Willis and Gunawardena (1994) that we should also include learner-computer interactions in the typology, though we will argue that in most computer-mediated learning interactions the interface to the content, to their teachers, and to other students, should be as transparent to the learner as the ink on the page, the coating on the audiotape. Both Moore (1992) and Farnes (1993) have identified the first generation of distance education as being characterised by single-media, correspondence education, and the second generation as being multimedia, inasmuch as packages of print-based learning materials might be supplemented by videotapes and audiotapes. These were essentially modes of delivery to independent learners; they provided for learner-content interaction in the main, for teacher-learner interaction occasionally, and learner-learner interaction rarely. Both Moore and Farnes envisage that in the next generation of distance education we might see students remote from each other and their teachers interacting with each other in computer-mediated learning environments, characterised by Farnes as the ne