It was frightening because we either are not doing anything in distributed learning or many things are going on that we don't know about and no one managing them. There is an awful lot going on at UC, usually spread out and didn't really get exposure in legitimacy and corporate support. What is distance learning - doesn't seem to be distance any more. This is about innovative or alternative delivery methods, which Trish had said earlier. There are a lot of innovative delivery methods, all of which go from videotapes, to live video broadcast to web.
Distance learning is about changing the classrooms.
I believe that every one should call it distributed learning. Distributed learning takes the classroom and puts it where the learner is and not where the teacher is. It is any time, any place learning which is totally different than learning in a classroom at a specific time. It is learner centered and not teacher centered, so that the learner can learn at the learners pace. Three of UC proposals were funded to develop new models for distributed learning.