I agree with the importance of seeing four relationships of interaction in distance learning, instead of the three that are suggested by the book Distance Education a Systems View. The first three types of interaction that this books mentions are: learner-content; learner-instructor; and learner-leaner. The crucial one it leaves out is learner-media. I'm not quite comfortable in discussing these aspects at large or the question of which is a more effective method of learning teaching or tutoring. I don't think the questions of "which of these is most effective" or which interaction is "most important" are very relevant, because without three of them (learner-content; learner instructor, learner-media) the definition of distance learning as a structured learned could not exist. And some tutors are fabulous and others such, so this level of generalizing is not a skill I possess. So perhaps I do not quite understand the questions.

As well, and as always it seems with such hugely generalized views, I would have to answer, well it depends... The dependency is based on the usual complexity of a learning environment. If a student were greatly interested in the content that motivation alone would make up for lousy interaction between the other interactive relationships. Then again with a great teacher any subject can be a fabulously enlightening life changing experience. Learning situations occur too, where the other learners in the class are largely irrelevant, whereas other times, they are the most important element.

I'm going to talk about an example learning situation I'm in now, it's not distance learning, but I think it will show why it's pedantic to prioritize interactions, learning objectives, etc. Because what is asks is "what are students learning when they're not learning the stated objectives, and what's the most useful thing to be learning?" The class I'm taking is supposed to be about technology and management. The students in the class for the most part are very low tech, but they are graduate students in management. The first day of class, first thing, our professor asked us to write down two or three things that we would like to learn about technology. Then he took our papers and latter assigned us to do a five minute presentation on one of the topics we chose. First of all the professor did not tell us this was his plan so in my opinion he was a bit deceitful and this has compromised the learner-instructor relationship for me.

Most students, I'm assuming, selected a topic they did not know very well. They specifically chose something they were rather ignorant about. That's what I did. I was expecting expert elucidation. But students themselves have had to go out and do research on this topic about which they were generally ignorant, with the goal of presented a five minute description of the topic to the class. Several of these five minutes presentations have been some of the most erroneous fallacious misleading reports on technology I've ever heard. Where presentations weren't misleading they were very simple and far below the level of teaching I would have expected from a situation class labeled as graduate'. At first I was rather appalled, because the professor did not point out the errors or where the presentations were misleading (partly because in many cases he really didn't know).

But then I started to ask, "what are we really learning?" What am I learning listening to these presentations; and what are the students giving the presentations learning? And I would also state that it has been the conscious intention of every student to present informative and accurate material, but we are working from a perspective of ignorance without guidance. This realization has been important because it has greatly reinforced my relationship with the learner-learner interaction. I see myself more and more as part of this community of students. As a community we share a kindred mythology, one of which is the victimization of poor teaching.

As well, as might be assumed as the corollary to the community of students as victims, the antithesis has occurred in the relationship of interaction with the professor. I had already been questioning the deceptive aspect of how the project assignments were made, and now I had to question even further the learning value of the content of the projects. So this process has greatly weakened the importance of the learner-instructor interaction for me. I don't know how others feel about that relationship because I'm not going to mention my disappointment it's not contextually relevant because they are not so conscious of how they learn. What are we learning? Lots of things, some good maybe some bad. We learned' misconceptions about Novell? Yes. But we at least I learned how to listen to a erroneous presentation and just let it go not raise my hand and say that's not quite true. This was kind of hard for me to do, too. So I'm pleased to be in a position to have practiced that, although I would not have selected that as a personal objective of the learning I wanted to occur in this class. Even though the class material was a bust, if I make one key relationship with a student from the class, I would consider that class successful. I guess it's a good to think about the learning environment as utopia and design content and interaction as such, but my little head just can't juggle complex interactions into a good better best category.

To synthesize back into the interactive relationships...for me distance or classroom I can make the teacher-instructor relationship the most important. But I need a certain type of instructor to do this. The instructor must have integrity and honest intentions. It helps too if they are masters of the content they are teaching, but sincere caring for students is essential. I can also make my relationship with content the key interactive focus. Good content can make up for a dreadful teacher. As well a group of creative and thinking students can make up for both poor content and poor teaching. Media is the least of my interactive concerns. If the media is inaccessible that's another issue, but that's failure and not design.

With distance learning class design, picking the students in your class is rare. So a focus should be how to bring out the best of the students who show up. Designing teaching material that allows each student to be creative and thoughtful is what I'd focus on. I would design each interactive relationship into a course by setting aside time (or a special learning space) for intimate interaction with a small group of other students, with a tutor, and with the instructor. For example, maybe in a literature class where we read 10 books, for one book I would work with 2 other students on a paper, and the teacher would be highly involved in this paper. The other nine books would have their own focus groups to allow each student intimate time with other students, a tutor, and the main instructor.