Differences Between Distance and Traditional Education (1:58)

Moore: About teaching then, one of the differences is well, first the investment of time and creativity up front before teachers come to interact with learners.  In distance, it is a much greater investment and it has to be so.  Why is this?  Well, we divide the teaching process into a number of different processes.  I would count off to at least five or six different specialties inside what we generally refer to as teaching.  But in particular, no let me say in general, I would divide at least into two parts, which is first the presentation of information and secondly, the facilitation of individual learning.  The presentation of information is mass communication process.  The other is an individualized communication process.  Each of these needs its’ own different expertise.  Even what I’m doing now, I’m speaking to probably a fairly large number of people, so this is a presentation and I’m not going to interact with any of you, but I hope that in the future, there will be individual instructors who will be interacting with each of you as each of you goes about transforming this information that I’m presenting into knowledge, which is what you do personally.  So this all has to be carefully thought through and designed before the learner comes into the presence, if you will, in real time or even asynchronously with the instructor.