Pressures Impacting Distance Education in Higher Education and the Use of a Design-Based Instructional Approach

The question guiding this chapter is knowing what we know now about distance education and respecting its rich and well-documented past, how might we envision the future of the field? Central to quality pedagogy for distance education is the importance placed on an instructor’s understanding of the options, opportunities and unintended consequences of the instructional design of each course and the types of supports, both soft and hard technologies, that enable it. The authors argue that institutions need to consider distance education practice across a continuum of pedagogical approaches, attending to the pressures impacting their context.