ABSTRACT
The 1980s have witnessed an explosion of alternative instructional delivery systems for American public education ( School Tech News 1986). Distance learning projects utilizing telecommunications technologies such as cable television, fibre optics, microwave, slow scan television, satellites and microcomputer networking have opened up opportunities for school districts to coordinate schedules and to share resources, thereby providing an expansion of curricular offerings and educational opportunities for students (Barker 1987a and Kitchen and Russell 1987). Fuelled by state-sponsored curriculum reform intended to upgrade high school graduation requirements, the concept of ‘distance education’ has caught the attention of both national and state education officials (Anderson 1986). Many higher education administrators are also showing keen interest in distance education as they face the challenges of declining enrolments, an ageing student population, and reduced levels of state funding. While interest in distance education continues to grow, efforts to define the concept remain inconsistent, and in many cases dated and incomplete. This is particularly true of some current writers in the field who continue to link distance education chiefly to correspondence study whereby the student:
is physically separated from the teacher,
is separated in time from the teacher, and
learns independent of contact with the teacher or with other students (Beaudoin 1986, Keegan 1986 and Moore 1987).
