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| Strategies for Teaching at a Distance | Classroom teachers count on a number of visual and unobtrusive cues from their students to enhance their delivery of instructional content.  A quick glance discloses who is attentively taking notes, pondering a difficult concept, or preparing to make a comment. The frustrated, confused, tired, or bored student is equally evident. The thoughtful tutor intentionally and subconsciously receives and analyzes these visual cues and adjusts the course delivery to meet the needs of the class during a particular lesson.
On the contrary, the distant teacher has few, if any, visual cues. Those are filtered through technological devices such as video monitors. This is not easy to carry on a stimulating teacher-class discussion when spontaneity is altered by technical requirements and distance.
Lacking a use of a real-time visual medium such as television, the teacher receives no visual information from the distant sites. Living in different communities, geographic regions, or even states deprives the teacher and students of a common community link.
Many teachers feel the opportunities offered by distance education outweigh the obstacles. Indeed, instructors often comment that the focused preparation required by distance teaching improves their overall teaching and empathy for their students. The problems posed by distance education are countered by opportunities to:
• Reach a wider student audience
• Meet the needs of students who are unable to attend on-campus classes
• Involve outside speakers who would otherwise be unavailable
• Link students from different social, cultural, economic, and experiential backgrounds
Improving Planning and Organization
Developing or adapting distance instruction, the core content remains basically unchanged, although its presentation requires new strategies and additional preparation time. Implications for planning and organizing a distance delivered course include:
• Begin the course planning process by studying distance education research findings.
• Before developing something new, check and review existing materials for content and presentation ideas.
• Analyze and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the possible delivery systems available to you (audio, video, data, and print) not only in terms of how they are delivered (satellite, microwave, fiber optic cable), but in terms of learner needs and course requirements before selecting a mix of instructional technology.
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