BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

To a large extent education can be thought of as a communication process among the participants. This article focuses on distance education, which has both the general communication processes that in-person education venues possess, and also communication specific to the technologies that mediate the teaching and learning taking place at a distance. There are various opportunities and barriers to effective communication. An exhaustive review of literature regarding communication barriers to distance education summarizes the technical, psychological, social, cultural, and contextual challenges leading to a significant conclusion: that as technology used for distance education improves so does both the opportunities to overcome many of the barriers to ineffective communication and the complexity of the barriers that are faced by the participants. The hierarchy of this structure is described.