FOUNDATIONS OF THE DISTANCE EDUCATION PROCESS: TEACHING, LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT

When addressing the foundations of education, it is important to answer three key questions: Who is the learner? How do they learn?, and What, when and how do we evaluate? Distance education is primarily geared towards a vast and heterogeneous population. However, we can also highlight that adults are the largest sector that visit "virtual" classrooms. Self-training is the basis of distance learning; it adapts itself to the framework of constructivist principles that underpin current education. This training method assumes that the initiative and management of the learning process are in the hands of the learner, without excluding external support from the professor/tutor. Distance evaluation is no longer a "pending task" within the non-traditional modality since virtual environments facilitate online and synchronous activities, as well as authorship within a virtual environment.