ABSTRACT
Contending theories of learning have had a formative influence in the field of instructional design and have brought to fore contrasting views. Instructional design models that have evolved in recent decades present dichotomous choices to instructional designers and faculty. From the vantage point of the TTD, however, individualized vs. collaborative, learner-centered vs. instructor-centered, or constructivist vs. behaviorist approaches to teaching and learning are not mutually exclusive. Each of these seemingly bifurcated choices offers a spectrum to instructors and learners for optimizing transactional distance. The choice is not selecting one over the other, but how much emphasis to put on one design criterion for an individual learner at each point in time. The value of these instructional and learning modes is determined dynamically by the autonomy that each learner exercises and the structure that the instructor brings to bear in each moment of instruction in real time. For example, the balance between individualized and collaborative learning at each moment in time depends on the following:
