Old and New Distance Learning Technologies
Implications for Interaction, Design, and Learner Support

INTRODUCTION
       Moore & Kearsley (2005) claim that there are at least five generations of distance education (pp. 24-45):
GENERATION	CHARACTERIZED BY:	
1. Correspondence	schools sending course materials to students through the mail	
2. Broadcast radio and  television	the use of these broadcast technologies	
3. Open universities	the development of new technologies and more by the implementation of open policies for admittance, along with more advanced applications of industrial (systems design) processes for course design, development and delivery	
4. Teleconferencing	using interactive audio and/or video conferencing technologies	
5. Internet/Web	the use of information and communication technologies in general and the online learning platform in particular

The purpose of this brief paper is to compare an old distance learning technology with a new distance learning technology and consider the implications each approach has in terms of interaction, design, and learner support. 
To date, the correspondence generation is the one that has lasted the longest.  It began in the 19th century and continues today in many developing countries where the mail is the most dependable technology for course delivery.  Further, it has remarkable similarities with the three generations that follow it in terms of course design and the two generations that follow it in terms of interaction and learner support.  For those reasons, this paper will consider the correspondence generation and postal technology as representative of "old" distance learning.  The internet/Web is the most recent generation of distance learning and uses the most recent advances in technology for education--more specifically, the Online Learning Platform (such as Blackboard and WebCT).  Typically, online learning platforms combine a number of tools and resources (including e-mail, chat, learning objects, online discussion) to help institutions/faculty create, organize, manage, and distribute learning materials over the internet.  For that reason, this paper will consider the internet/Web generation and the online learning platform as representative of "new" distance learning. 

MODES OF INTERACTION
According to Holmberg (2001), distance education has, from the very beginning, “been characterized by mediated subject-mater presentation and mediated interaction between students and tutors" (p. 9).  Indeed, student-tutor (teacher) interaction is the form of interaction most characteristic of the correspondence school generation.  In recent years, however, with the advent of the information and communication technologies (ICTs), opportunities for interaction have increased significantly.  Anderson (2003) argues that the current technology of distance education now offers at least six different types of interaction.  The following table list Anderson’s six types and remarks briefly how/if they occur in the “old” and “new” generation of distance learning.

TYPE
 OF INTERACTION	“Old” Correspondence Generation
MAIL	“New” Internet/Web Generation
ONLINE LEARNING PLATFORM  (OLP)	
1. Student-Teacher	Interaction via post	Interaction via email and discussion boards	
2. Student-Student	No interaction	Interaction enhanced by email, discussion boards, and collaborative work groups	
3. Student-Content	Interaction by reading texts sent by post	Enhanced interaction not only with course content available in OLP, but also with information available on the Web, online libraries, as well as information added by other students, discussion boards, etc. 	
4. Teacher-Content	If it occurs at all, it would occur during course development stage by teachers either writing original texts or adding comments to texts	Enhanced interaction as teachers have tools to immediately update/add to course information, as well as create new learning objects, collaborative activities, etc. using the OLP 	
5. Teacher-Teacher	If it occurs at all, it would occur during course development phase 	Networking enhanced by the OLP and the Web make collaboration among teachers and sharing of course content/information easy to do 	
6. Content-Content	No interaction	Interaction possible due to programming and/or  the creation of artificial intelligence, which can produce content that not only updates itself, but changes and evolves in the OLP as content changes and evolves in various information databases	

APPROACHES TO THE DESIGN
The practice of Instructional Systems Design as industrial-style process for course design and development did not become codified into a discipline until the years after World War II, though it was always more accepted in business and industrial training than in primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools (for overview of systems design as course development process, see Bates & Pool, 2003; for overview of systems design in education, see Betts, 1992; for overview of instructional systems design, see Reigeluth, 1999).  But correspondence schools were always in the industrial camp; that is, they existed in industrial times, they were usually for-profit enterprises seeking efficient means of production and delivery; and they flourished in a time when information was stored/contained in analog formats (not digital), and thus more difficult to access, manage, and acquire.  Consequently, in designing a course, the goal was to efficiently develop a (re)producible object/collection of information.  So whether a single author, a team, or an industrial-style production line produced the course, and whether the assessments were tests, assignments, or projects, the end product was a prescribed collection of information to be delivered to students at a distance.
The online learning platform, however, has come to prominence in a post-industrial time, when production processes are typically managed by ICTs, where information is abundant (digital and far more accessible), and where people, though separated geographically, can share the same virtual space (for discussion on how ICTs affect geography, space, and production processes, see Friedman, 2005).  This new technological context has had an affect not only on how courses are produced, but also on what it means to be a course.  Caplan (2005) argues that there is “no accepted definition of what constitutes an online course” and suggests that online courses can run the gamut from text-based discussions to interactive, multimedia rich collections of learning objects, tutorials, and assessments (p. 177).  Others (see, e.g., Bender, 2003; Gillani, 2003; Palloff & Pratt, 2003; Benbuana-Fich, Hiltz, & Harasim, 2005) argue that online classes are as much learning environments as they are collections of information and that the needs of students should be at the center of the design, as opposed to the needs of the instructor.  At any rate, at least three important features important to course design made available by new information and communication technologies are: (a) enhanced access to information, (b) enhanced interaction with faculty and students, and (c) shared virtual spaces.  With the “new technology,” course designers can shift their focus from developing course content for delivery to designing environments for student-centered learning. 

STUDENT SUPPORT
During the correspondence school generation, student support services could offer little more than what could be delivered via mail or phone: admissions, registration, career services, and, possibly, counseling and access to interlibrary loan.  Even if they wanted to offer more, the institutions were constrained by the limitations of the technology.  In the internet/Web generation, however, technology provides far more opportunities to expand student services. As a matter of fact, the consumer generation is increasingly demanding such services as a part of the educational experience.  Over ten years ago, Robinson (1995) argued that we need a theory of learner support that includes curriculum, course design, and interaction.  Rumble (2000) suggested that we should rethink the whole structure of the university and put the learner at the very center of all support services.  Granger and Benke (1998) proclaim the importance of knowing your learners and argue that academic institutions must discover students' needs and take them into account in course design and delivery.  In discussing online courses, Thorpe (2002) asks a key question: "If much of the content of such a course is generated through online interaction and collaborative activities, how can we consider course design without also dealing with learner support at the same time" (p. 106)?

CONCLUSION
In terms of course design, whereas the postal technology primarily supported static courses as collections of information, the online learning platform supports more fluid courses designs, less defined by the information they contain and more by the networking they offer and the learning communities they create.
In terms of interaction, the primary type of interaction using the postal service is between student and teacher; in almost all cases, students work alone, without interaction among peers. On the other hand, using the online learning platform and information technologies, the options for interactions are several, including:  (a) students interacting peers, teachers, and course content, (b) teachers interacting with other teachers, as well as students and course content, and (c) even course content interacting with new and evolving course content.  
In terms of student support, the postal technology offered very little beyond the basics of admissions and registration, but as a consequence of networked communities and online technologies, old-fashioned student support services has begun to evolve into client-centered learner services that take into account the entire learning experience of the student. 

References

Anderson, T. (2003). Modes of interaction in distance education: Recent developments and research questions. In M.G. Moore & W.G Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp-129-144). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Banathy, B.H. (1992). A systems view of education: Concepts and principles for effective practice. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Educational Technology Publications. 
Bates, A.W., & Poole, G. (2003).  Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 
Betts, F. (1992). How systems thinking applies to education. Educational Leadership, 50(3), 38-41.
Benbunan-Fich, R., Hiltz, S.R., & Harasim, L. (2005). The online interaction learning model: An integrated theoretical framework for learning networks. In S.R. Hiltz & R. Goldman (Eds.), Learning together online: Research on asynchronous learning network. (pp. 19-38). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Caplan, D. (2004). The development of online courses.  In T. Anderson and F Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning (pp. 175-194). Athabasca, Canada: Athabasca Universtiy. 
Friedman, T.L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Gillani, B.B. (2003). Learning theories and the design of e-learning environments. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. 
Granger, D., & Benke, M. (1998). Supporting learners at a distance from inquiry through completion. In C. C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education (pp. 127-137). Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing. 
Holmberg, B. (2001). Distance education in essence. Oldenberg: BIS.
Moore, M.G., & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view (2nd ed.). Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth.
Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2003). The virtual student. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Reigeluth, C.M. (1999). What is instructional-design theory and how is it changing? In C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory. (Volume II). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.
 Robinson, B. (1995). Research and pragmatism in learner support. In F. Lockwood (Ed.), Open and distance learning today (pp. 221-231). London: Routledge.
 Rumble, G. (2000). Student support in distance education in the 21st century: Learning from service management. Distance Education, 21(2), 216-235.
Thorpe, M. (2002). Rethinking learner support: The challenge of collaborative online learning.  Opening Learning, 17(2), 105-119.