Incorporating Interaction into Your Distance Learning Course

December 5, 2005

When many students start a distance learning program, they are often concerned about how the perceived lack of interaction will affect their learning. Many distance learning instructors are concerned about this too, wondering how they can make their classes successful without the interaction that naturally takes place in a classroom. Interaction is an important component of instruction which has the following benefits:

Interaction builds a sense of community among the students, which leads to student satisfaction, retention, and increased learning.
Interaction provides students with feedback they need to determine if they are mastering the content in your course.
Interaction exposes students to a variety of learning resources, including content materials and the experiences and knowledge shared by other students.
Interaction makes students become more actively engaged in the learning process, leading to higher levels of learning.

There are three main types of interaction: learner-to-content, learner-to-learner, and learner-to instructor. Fortunately, with some planning, you can successfully build each type of interaction into your distance learning course. Some instructors even report that they experience more interaction in their distance learning courses than they do in their traditional campus-based classes. To learn more about the three types of interaction and how to build them into your distance learning course, visit Incorporating Interaction in Your Distance Learning Course.

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Last modified: Dec 02, 2005, 17:27 EST