Desk-top televideo conferencing, although technically primitive, does work and is available to anyone who buys an inexpensive camera that plugs into the personal computer. At least four companies, including one involving Microsoft's Bill Gates, are planning to blanket the globe with coverage from low earth-orbit satellites that will provide very high speed televideo transmission in both uplink and downlink directions. Effect on Educational Practices DE forces educators to re-assess how instruction is done. If we simply extend the lecture hall model to mass distribution of content via tapes, CDs, and the Web, the quality of education suffers. In on-site instruction, even in large lecture classes, at least some dialog occurs among students, teaching assistants, and professors.
Students certainly learn from each other in laboratories, hallways, dorm rooms, and even beer halls.
DE, properly done, is NOT efficient. Efficient education occurs when you pack several hundred students into a lecture hall. Efficiency in education, however, does not equate with effectiveness and quality. If that is our vision of DE, we would probably be better off insisting on on-site instruction in ever larger lecture halls. Whatever our vision, we need to get it clarified soon.