Competing views on online delivery of education and training

Online delivery is a significant innovation that impacts on education and training contexts in Australia. As with any innovation, the opinions, ideas and research are often contradictory and competing. The hyperbole surrounding the potential of Online delivery lubricated by the mass distributive capabilities of the media often make analysis and criticism difficult. Questions about the effectiveness of Online delivery are complex and hard to untangle. There are significant questions about improved student outcomes, impacts on teachers and learners, beneficiaries and casualties, teacher/trainer preparation, pedagogy, materials design and learner diversity. This paper imposes a theoretical framework on these questions and the data collected to answer them, and provides guideposts for further research and thought. It is a model that accommodates changing debates. It is an excellent tool for describing the participants in a changeable environment because it is both a picture and an explanation of instability, and it provides the participants with maps of the distances which need to be bridged whilst leaving the journey relatively unsupervised.