It is time, therefore, to move away from media comparison studies that often yield no significant differences, and begin to examine factors such as instructional design, learning and instructional theory, and theoretical frameworks in distance education, which when applied to learning, might account for significant differences in levels of performance. The questions that need to be asked are not which medium works best, but rather how best to incorporate media attributes into the design of effective instruction for learning. Studies which compare two different instructional designs using the same medium may yield more useful results for practice than simple media comparisons. Little research has been done to examine what happens in the learning process when students interact with various technologies. Research in the area of distance education falls into areas of traditional and exploratory research.
Traditional research occurs within the field and is reported in the distance education literature.
Exploratory research is often interdisciplinary and found in related literature. It is frequently the result of interest in educational application of newer technologies in various related disciplines. The traditional research literature in distance education is brief and inconclusive. Both quantitative and qualitative studies have generally lacked rigor. Driven by practice, much research has taken the form of program evaluation, descriptions of individual distance education programs, brief case studies, institutional surveys, and speculative reports.