It's their only contact with you, so every message is read. Every nuance or lack of clarity gets jumped on. Distance education, owing to its fast-paced medium, requires instructors to remain up to date in their disciplines. So in our discussions, people would bring in current material they'd found on the Net. Or the teacher would ask our opinions about current events.
Textbooks are no longer the mainstay of study.
Instead, it falls to the instructor to make course material pertinent to the student's life. Likewise, teachers must stay abreast of communication technology. Today's DL instructors are the pioneers of a new methodology. And as new technologies emerge, educators must be able to experiment and integrate these into their curricula. The prospect of such a technology-intensive job description may account for the reluctance of many regular staff members to become involved in DL programs.