Within a social constructivist paradigm, the sharing with others is paramount to learning and development, so the word 'refractive' might be considered to be more appropriate. This implies the idea being displaced to another rather than to the self, but it still does not imply anything more than sharing with just one other. There is an opportunity within telematics to open discussion and debate to a larger group of people - a community. Distance learning has enabled the learner to work alone or with others on a set of materials but without the opportunity to question the teacher about the content. Telematics now provides the opportunity for teaching to take place over time and in different places.
Electronic communication can be through text, video and audio graphics.
The experience of the OU PGCE students is therefore considered in the context of a critical community. In telephone interviews with a number of secondary mathematics students there was a common theme emerging which suggested that if they had access to a subset of the community, and in this case it was the tutor group, then they felt that the sense of community extended to those students they had not met. One student reported how the development in her confidence within her tutor group then encouraged her to go into the mathematics conference. In the mathematics conference she first spent some time 'sussing out how it was working', and then started to post messages if she felt she had something to offer. Once she had the confidence to post responses she did not think it was necessary to have an image of who was receiving them.