This integrated approach to EDE uses more than one delivery and distribution platform, integrating mass delivery of instructional materials via satellite with innovative low-cost options for terrestrial feedback and interaction using Internet and wireless telecommunications. The result will be increased access to richer learning environments while enhancing interactivity and sharing of information among teachers and students. We hope to identify and develop promising technologies that enrich pedagogy, technologies that can be used in ways to promote critical thinking skills, problem solving, collaborative experience, and collegiality in the learning community. For example, multimedia EDE is becoming a practical reality. Traditional EDE efforts often put the emphasis on electronic delivery systems for slickly packaged instructional material.
Distance education has two components, teaching and learning.
What happens at the other end of the instructional delivery pipeline, i.e., the learning, is greatly influenced by how much interactions students have with the instructor and with each other. The dominant distance education model involves lesson delivery as one-way video broadcasts, with a return telephone path for questions and feedback. There is often no convenient way for students to send questions to the instructor, to share ideas among themselves after the scheduled broadcast time or to access other relevant information. Any follow-on learning activities encouraging students to work collaboratively are difficult to manage. Televideo lectures, we believe, can now be supplemented by follow-on learning activities.