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Rick, your rhetorical question about 'distance Education' or "distributed Education" is really valid - I was a DE tutor marker for many years, - and when i lived on campus, had student living in the building, who tried to slip papers under my door - but they couldn't do that they had to take the paper down the road to the Distance Education building mail drop box -- which also brought up some ethical/pedagogical issues about real bodies versus virtual bodies in DE spaces. However, when I was a "mature' student iwth a family and full-time jog, DE made it possible forme to speed up my course access - because I could manage it at home - and having lived on campus as a grad student - i noticed that accesss is still problematic for first year and non-traditional students with families. so distributed education/distance education is becoming more necessary than ever i feel. Also - although i enjoyed working with online software First Class in the Distance Education context - the actual work load was exponentially time consuming - and incredibly engrossing, demanding and interactive - so much more so than the regular mark the essay , answer the office hours time plan of the regular Distance Education environment - In the course that I worked in ( Designs for Learning Writing - Teaching Writing for Teachers ) every Tutor marker including myself - were constantly struggling with the huge demands of time - and constantly in dispute with the Centre (and union) over the hours that had to extra billed ( about 30 - 50% depending on expertise ) there are curious reasosn why Distance ed. wants to develop online courses but still pay through the old way 9 baed on bodies -not on workload) and how it visualises course development, its supervisors and its grad student markers as working within the old technology formula - i.e. write a handbook and study guide, devlop the assignments, hire other people to mark the essays, revise in two years. I think also there are not so innocent incentives for institutions to use these on-line technologies because they offer up hugely rich sources of 'data" for instructional education/technology - corporate technologies, etc. and especially with some software programs that leave a history of each interaction. i have some concerns with the issue of 'access" informed consent of students, thse technologies are intrusive and insistent,. to give an example, at SFU in the fist Class model an outside CDE director can pop into a conference, go to our particular course folder, and count interactions around an assignment. In our class, students noticed the "lurker" requested contact which was declined. fortunately we had a record of the event - because this is a feature of the First Class software. - in a real world situation this would be the equilavlent of walking into a classroom, opening a students written journal and counting the words on the page, and leaving - without introducing themselves, or without asking permission of instructor or student. We kicked up a fuss, and they did their counting AFTER the class was over. - still doesn't dodge the ethical issue - On the other hand, one of my students said - mid-point in the course --"this writing is like a truth serum' - when it works well, on-line composition and interaction can be very exciting and motivating - and supportive - especially for students who are truly learning from a distance. the final note is around the mandate for access which Distance Education should be supporting -- the level of new technology that is required to support on-line learning is not as ubiquitous as folks in urban centres of higher learning might presume - computer users might not have modems, or the infrastructure in remote rural areas to support the demands. i have worked with teachers who only had access during open school hours - if all was working right. So like all technologies and pedagogies - DE is complex, contradictory and full of possibilities. kathryn KathrynAlexander, Doctoral Candidate Simon Fraser University Faculty of Education., Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6 [log in to unmask]