The following article is excerpted from the Distance Education Report, Spring, 1999. The author begins this article stating that a colleague of his, Michael Moore, has read 2,000 articles on open and distance education. Moore argues that in any educational setting, distance is defined by the amount of dialogue and structure.
More structure increases distance, and more dialogue decreases distance.
Therefore, distance education is not defined by the geographic separation of the learner and teacher, but is defined by the amount of dialogue and structure, as is the case with any type of educational activity. For example, if a class is so tightly structured in that the students have very little interaction in the learning arena, distance is exacerbated. This can occur in the same room. While this is not a forum to bash the use of the lecture, the fact is that the lecture method is over-utilized in the college setting. Obviously, different amounts of structure and dialogue are necessary depending on the content being taught in the instructional endeavor.