Most of distance learning has been directed at reproducing traditional campus-based learning with a televisual medium, enabling students to access information at their will. There are numerous assumptions to this approach that many of us would challenge.

Direct Transfer of Classroom Techniques

Often the assumption is made that the mere transfer of present teaching techniques will be effective in the new technology. This would seem to be logical in a televisual society, except for the fact that the potentials of television have never been fully developed. Instead, the lowest common denominators of marketing and mass appeal have dictated much of television fare. There has been much accomodation to the concept of turning the performer on or off at the viewer's will; much accomodation for the multiplicity of stimuli, art, design, music, dialog, and text all at once, and much accomodation to the entertainment value. But there has been relatively little attention to means of channeling the advantages to disciplined learning, which has, throughout history, proved both tantalizing to humans and essential to "progress," if that Enlightenment term may still be used. This paper addresses the Internet possibilities for enhancing disciplined learning, not for turning into another entertainment and certification path for "training."

Interactivity

The assumption is often made that the new medium is interactive by merely providing the means of turning a lecture on or off. By the means of providing access to additional material at an Internet site. Not so. We have approached interactivity in the sense that Freire might have used it in education for the oppressed. We consider that interactivity means the inclusion of those we are teaching in the process and development of the teaching itself. To that end we have conceived of "process texts," writings shared between students and teachers, and community, on the interpretation of and academic discourse on the main themes of the social issues of our field.

We believe that those writings assume paramount importance as texts for use in the interpretation of traditional texts. This recognizes the need to give "significance" to work that consumes enormous energy for both teachers and students, and through recognizing these works as "texts" makes them available for the intertextual readings essential to understanding the issues that concern us. Only by granting such status to student "texts" do we respect student work in terms of academic discourse. Like Bourdieu, we believe that such respect is due students' work, and that that work has an important role to play in the higher education of aspiring academic professionals and their colleagues who aspire to actually running the corporate or socialist or any other world.

Control

Another underlying assumption with which we are concerned is that control is apparent in any teaching situation. Buzz words like "integrity," academic and otherwise, have little meaning in a society that cannot define its goals and responsibilities in terms of feeding and providing work for its citzenry. We have attempted through this distance project to let go of control based on privileging our subjective choice of canon and concern, and to effectively share those choices with our students. We have found in the process that students are confounded by what we call "deep structure," having grown used to "disciplinary structure" and supervision. We believe that is a good space for making them uncomfortable and guiding them towards a more meaningful respect for learning.