Distance education or education at a distance

Abstract

In a state such as South Australia, many primary and secondary students study far from their teachers. There are various reasons for this such as the geographic isolation of students or the inability of many schools to timetable teachers for all of the curricula required by their students. The term 'distance education ' is used to describe perhaps the best known and most widely written about alternative strategy to the classroom. However, there is a much younger strategy which relies heavily on the use of newer technologies. This has been called 'education at a distance ' to distinguish between the two. Distance education has been defined as: 'a purposeful and deliberate learning activity, planned, structured and negotiated by a teacher; received and controlled by a learner who is operating in a non-contiguous mode for most of the time'. ' This definition immediately restricts the options available to an educational program. Indeed some writers, such as Baath, consider 'pure ' distance education to use only non-immediat