In distance education, the role of teacher is different from his role in traditional education. The face-to-face interaction is one of the main things that does not exist in distance education programs. From a teacher's point of view, distance education does not allow the teacher to see the students reactions to learning. A second difference related to teaching is making teaching an effective process. The effectiveness of a distance learning program can be tested through measuring how much it utilizes technology for delivery of information to the learners. Teaching in a distance learning program needs paying a lot of attention to the students' motivations. In a distance education program, students can be easily confused, anxious, or losing motivation. Teachers need to care about student's feelings and encourage them to learn and to help them build self-confidence. Most distance learning programs rely on tutors to perform many of the functions carried usually by teachers.

Tutoring is an interactive process with students in a distance education program, on one-to-one basis as the students work the content in a study guide or other material. Tutoring has many advantages over teaching in distance education program. If we refer to the functions of tutors in distance education programs, it includes many functions that are not part of teachers functions. Discussing course content, helping students plan work, supervising projects, and caring about students' feelings. Tutoring can provide students with individualized instruction in their courses. This improves students' rate of achievement. Other advantages of tutoring is that it works as a bridge between students and the instruction for the purpose of interpreting policies and solving problems (Moore & Kearsley). A tutor who understands the differences between distance education and traditional education can provide guidance. Tutoring is better for distance education program, provided that it fulfills the requirements of being good tutoring, like profession in using media and technology, having good knowledge and good teaching skills, having good organization and flexibility, and ability to provide motivation and problem solving, and finally commitment to students and program.

Interaction is the "street-talk" in distance education programs. There are three interaction types that have to be practiced: learner-content interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner-learner interaction.

Learner-content interaction is the construction of knowledge by learner through interaction with content. This interaction leads to change in perspective, construction of knowledge, and presenting the content needed for this process. Content can be presented interactive multimedia, software, TV broadcast, and even text.

Learner-instructor interaction is considered highly desirable by most educators. This interaction includes stimulation of students' interests in the subject and their motivation, organizing students' learning process, providing counseling and support and encouragement to students.

Learner-learner interaction is a new dimension in distance education. The classroom has been the only place of interaction between students, and the challenge now is to make this interaction between students without even having them together. Group interaction is one of the learner-learner interaction, where more than two learners interact together. New technologies, like teleconferencing can make learner-learner interaction much easier and more valuable.

I looked at a class that was taught in traditional education and distance education approaches in the same time. The class was Advance Web development (http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~veena/
webdev/ ), having the usual weekly face-to-face class, conferencing distance learning technology "First Class" was used in parallel. We can say that the class was taught twice in the same time. If we assume that the class was being taught by a distance education approach only, we find that the online class has the three types of interaction in different ways. The learner-content interaction was provided through a print material that students had to read, analyze, and submit commitment about this content for discussion, and give their opinions about what they've read. Learner-instructor interaction came from the supervision provided by the instructor, from the comments and notes, and from the organization of the class, discussions, homeworks, and reading for the learners. Learner-learner interaction came from the group evaluation of educational web sites, the online discussions, and the focus questions that learners commented on.

In the three types of interactions, instructor-learner interaction was the most important to all students. It has its effect on the content, the organization of the class, it directed the learner-learner interaction, and provided advisory and encouragement to students. I can say that instructor-learner interaction dominated the other two types of interaction.

I reviewed another class that is provided online, in what's called "The World Lecture Hall." The class is called "Art Appreciation 1301" , (http://www.hccs.cc.tx.us/JWoest/jw_1301.htm), and is provided by Houston Community College. The class gives an approach about how to use distance learning technology. I've looked at the types of interaction supported by this class. The class provides some information about distance learning methods, and gives some help about using the content and the material for the class, however, it does not give a fair way of interaction between the learner and the content. This interaction might be provided by the instructor, but if the class is being taught online only, the content is not even enough.

The learner-instructor interaction is provided through email. Having this interaction through email only might not be enough, but this depends mainly on the efforts done by the instructor to use the available technology. I think that using email as learner-instructor interaction method can't give the required interaction needed. Some people may not have email accounts, other may not check their emails often. The teacher's email account might be filled, and run out of organization, in a way that he can't follow every message.

There is no sign about learner-learner interaction, but my guess is that learners have to meet often in places related to the content, to do group evaluation, or comments.

For this course, interaction was poor and not enough to provide the necessary relationship between learner-content-instructor.

In distance education programs, the teacher role is different, and the learner-teacher interaction is a very important interaction.