All Learning is Distance Learning

Nontraditional learning environments provide opportunities to traverse some distances that are more difficult to cross in traditional classroom setting. Those whose personality or learning style causes them to shrink back from speaking up in a physical classroom may find it easier to express themselves in an environment where a posting does not represent an “interruption” of a professor’s lecture and where one can choose one’s wording carefully rather than risk embarrassment with an impromptu remark.

Those who perceive racial or cultural distances in a classroom may find the relative anonymity of the online classroom, where one does not necessarily know the others’ racial, ethnic, national, or cultural backgrounds unless that information is voluntarily offered, a safer environment for the learning process. Those who float from classroom to classroom in isolation, confronted each time by a fresh crowd of strangers called “classmates,” may find the relational depth and relatively small size of the cohort to be an environment in which one can experience multidirectional learning for the first time.

Those who seek regular interactions with instructors who are on campus only three days a week and are available only during specified office hours may find the accessibility of an online instructor by email to be both convenient and conducive to a more productive learning experience. And those who do not have access to traditional higher education because of physical impairment often reveal in the freedom to learn (and be in relationship with other learners) in an environment in which their impairments are neutralized or even an advantage.

Perhaps those are distances worth traversing.