ABSTRACT
Börje Holmberg introduced a very fecund notion into the practice of distance education when he suggested that the aim of correspondence education was the establishment of a ‘guided didactic’ conversation with the learner. From this simple idea has grown an extensive literature on two-way communication in distance education. Those involved with the monitoring and the counselling of students, who are most directly responsible for maintaining instructional conversations at a distance and guiding their didactics, have created an especially active international network. Otto Peters formulated a more controversial concept when he described distance education as an industrial form of education', a term viewed as an oxymoron by those unsympathetic to mass education outside the classroom.
