Learning Science at a Distance: Instructional Dialogues and Resources

Introduction Today's distance education systems include resources for individual study (intrapersonal dialogue) such as self-instruction texts, Webbased instructional systems, video recordings, etc., and resources for interpersonal dialogue such as tutorials, telephone counselling, synchronous and asynchronous conferencing, and email. Given this diversity, we analyzed some aspects of Open University students' dialogic behaviour (what they did as they studied, how, and with whom) as they studied physics and chemistry courses. In addition, we compared these findings with those obtained from campus-based college and university students studying similar courses. To carry out such an analysis, a need exists for a broad conceptual framework of instruction that recognizes the centrality of instructional dialogue. Such a framework was initially proposed as a general theory of distance education (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005) to replace the “Theory of Transactional Distance” (Moore, 1993). The framework subsequently evolved into the “Theory of Instructional Dialogue” (Gorsky, Caspi & Chajut, 2007); the theory provides a useful working model for