ABSTRACT
Historically, the hallmark of distance education has been a philosophical commitment to extending access to education to those who would not normally have such an opportunity. Given this commitment, the overarching challenge for distance education has been to bridge the spatial separation of the learner from a teacher. In the more remote past, the separation has largely been due to the geographic locations of participating individuals. Over time, this separation has also become due to other kinds of personal circumstances on the part of the learnergenerally scheduling commitments that prevent a student from going to a location where the teacher is situated (for example, shift workers and those who have to work away from home intermittently).
