ABSTRACT
Educational theorists and policy makers alike are currently fascinated with a range of technologies called “distance education” because they see in these technologies possibilities for addressing a number of problems-from meeting the instructional needs of a demographically diverse student pop ulation (including many who work full-time or who live inconvenient dis tances from institutions of higher education) to pooling scarce resources in an increasingly stringent economy.2 Women’s studies administrators, fac ulty, and students are both eager to avail themselves of the benefits of dis tance education and wary of its possible pedagogical limitations. On the plus side, women’s studies practitioners see in distance education a means of reaching out to homebound or rural women who would otherwise be un able to take courses. It also offers small programs with limited resources an opportunity to share faculty and courses with other similarly small programs with equally limited but different resources. But how congenial are these technologies to the kind of participatory, collaborative learning that is the hallmark of the feminist classroom? It was, in part, to answer that question that I agreed to offer my Feminist Theories course via dis tance education to students at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), as well as at my own institution, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). While my reflections on the experience of trying to teach a women’s studies course in a distance-learning environment can make no more than a qualitative, experiential, and anecdotal contribution to the small but growing literature on women’s studies and distance education, I believe they raise questions we need to ponder before unconditionally em bracing these technologies.3
