CALT12205.fm


 

ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology
Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2004

                  
Transactional distance in a blended 
learning environment
Jon Dron*,a, Catharine Seidelb & Gabrielle Littenb
aUniversity of Brighton, UK; bCrawley College, UK
Taylor and Francis LtdCALT12205.sgm10.1080/0968776042000216219ALT-T Research in Learing Technology0968-7769 (print)/1741-1629 (online)Original Article2004Taylor and Francis Ltd1220000002004JonDronSchool of Computing, Mathematical and Information SciencesUniversity of BrightonWatts Building, Lewes RoadBrightonBN2 4GJUKjon.dron@brighton.ac.uk

This paper presents a case study that describes and discusses the problems encountered during the
design and implementation of a blended learning course, largely taught online through a web-based
learning environment. Based on Moore’s theory of transactional distance, the course was explicitly
designed to have dialogue at its heart. However, the reality of systemic behaviours caused by deliv-
ering such a course within a group of conventional further and higher educational institutions has
led to an entirely unanticipated reversion to structure, with unpleasant consequences for both qual-
ity and quantity of dialogue. The paper looks at some of the reasons for this drift, and suggests that
some of the disappointing results (in particular in terms of the quality of the students’ experience
and associated poor retention) can be attributed to the lack of dialogue, and consequent increase in
transactional distance. It concludes with a description and evaluation of steps currently being taken
to correct this behaviour.

Introduction

This paper describes a blended learning course which has attempted to apply Michael
Moore’s theory of transactional distance. This theory asserts that it is transactional
rather than physical distance which is of greatest significance in any educational trans-
action (Moore & Kearsley, 1996). Transactional distance is measured on a contin-
uum of structure and dialogue. The more structure, the less dialogue and vice versa
(Figure 1). A highly structured course will give little opportunity to challenge
concepts and explore congruent or tangential paths, while dialogue will inevitably
lead to departures from planned outcomes and result in new, unanticipated learning
outcomes.
Relationship between dialogue and structure

*Corresponding author. School of Computing, Mathematical and Information Sciences, University
of Brighton, Watts Building, Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK. Email: jon.dron@bright-
on.ac.uk
ISSN 0968–7769 (print)/ISSN 1741–1629 (online)/04/020163–12
© 2004 Association for Learning Technology
DOI: 10.1080/0968776042000216219



 

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Moore does not suggest that either structure or dialogue is an inherently good
thing. Each may be appropriate in different circumstances and a typical educational
event such as a conventional lecture will, at a micro-level, move constantly between
the two. However, the reciprocal relationship between them at any given point is
immutable. A third dimension of the theory suggests that more autonomous learners,
being self-directed, are better able to cope with more structure while less autonomous
learners benefit more from greater dialogue. Moore equates less autonomy with more
teacher control. Experimental evidence (Saba & Shearer, 1994) based on predictions
of a system dynamics model correlated with discourse analysis, appears to confirm
that the theory is substantially correct. However, there may be some grounds for
believing that there are rare exceptions (Dron, 2004) and there is a fuzziness in his
formulation that allows for different interpretations depending on whether transac-
tional distance is considered as a two by two matrix, a single continuum or distinct
clusters (Garrison, 2000). In this paper we interpret structure and dialogue as broadly
characterising two extremes of a single continuum with a reciprocal relationship
between the two.

Beginnings

In 2000, HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) announced
that it would fund a number of pilot projects to create Foundation Degrees. Founda-
tion Degrees are strongly work-based or work-related, designed and managed in
collaboration with employers and delivered mainly by Further Education (FE)
colleges. Equating to the first two years of an honours degree, they target students
who might otherwise be excluded from higher education, notably those with uncon-
ventional qualifications and/or in work. Their focus tends to be more practical than
academic.

Led by the University of Brighton, a consortium consisting of two universities, four
FE colleges and various employers submitted a successful bid for HEFCE funding
which led, in 2001, to the development of the eSystems Design & Technology degree.
The course was designed as an Internet Computing degree, to be delivered solely as
a part-time, four-year course. For strategic reasons the plan was to deliver at least
some of the course electronically, though the exact amount of and mechanism for this
delivery was not made explicit.

A Course Development Team (CDT), consisting of representatives from each
college and a University-based development leader, was appointed and given

Figure 1. Relationship between dialogue and structure



 

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responsibility for course development, with quality control provided by the Univer-
sity. A course leader from the University was appointed with a research back-
ground in and practical experience of online collaborative learning. However,
though playing a significant part in strategic planning, other commitments
prevented the appointee (the first author of this paper) from playing more than a
strategic role in course development.

Defining the course ethos

Decisions about the form of the course were made, grounded in theory and pragmatic
choice. Pragmatically, the Internet was proposed as the main delivery mechanism so
that students could access course materials from their workplace or from home. This
was also seen as an effective means of monitoring and controlling the content and
quality of the course across multiple colleges.

Lack of time and resources militated against the development of highly struc-
tured course materials. As the course was aiming to attract learners who were
unwilling or unable to enter conventional higher education, there was a need to
cater for a rich variety of prior knowledge and learning styles. Wedermeyer (1971)
noted that independent study of the early 1970s typically offered little freedom in
goal determination and activity selection, an issue that has arisen frequently since
then despite the ubiquity of computer-mediated forms of distance education. The
need to cater for multiple learning styles implied alternative perspectives on the
resources, multiple resources catering for different needs or an adaptive hyperme-
dia approach (Brusilovsky, 2001). Furthermore, to cater sufficiently for a variety of
learning styles it was felt important to make use of rich media which, as Laurillard
observes are generally too expensive to be produced by individuals (Laurillard,
1993, p. 182). However, with little time to develop such resources, these
approaches were not deemed possible.

Applying transactional distance theory, it was decided to define an ethos based on
learning through dialogue. A dialogue-based approach would require a lower
commitment of development time, albeit at the expense of time spent maintaining
dialogue when the course was running (Figure 2). Most discussions would be facili-
tated through online asynchronous forums. Synchronous approaches were felt to
provide insufficient flexibility for students in full time work, as well as posing some
technical obstacles.
Relationship of delivery to development time for structured/dialogic delivery modes

The course was designed to be delivered in a blended mode. Seely Brown and
Duguid observe that ‘digital technologies are adept at maintaining communities
already formed. They are less good at making them’. (Seely Brown & Duguid, 2000,
p. 206). For this reason, online discussions would be supplemented by occasional
face-to-face meetings. They would also support the few parts of the course that
required specialised laboratory facilities, which were kept to a minimum by basing
practical work primarily on free and open source software.

Using computer mediated communication is a potentially hazardous approach as
mediated communication is in some ways a pale shadow of face-to-face discussion



 

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and is not a simple replication of such discourse (Peters, 2000). Given the need to
develop a learning community, course developers were urged to employ Salmon’s five
step model (Salmon, 2000) and were given training in the approach. Salmon outlines
the five stages through which she believes an online learning community must pass in
order to reach the stage at which learners are constructing knowledge through inter-
action—access & motivation, online socialization, information exchange, knowledge
construction and finally, development. The model was adopted to provide teachers new
to delivering distance learning with a reassuring and effective framework to assist
them in coming to terms with this unfamiliar mode of teaching.

With an explicit social constructivist ethos (Vygotsky, 1978), it was hoped that,
with time and suitable models of good practice, much of the learning might be facil-
itated by the students themselves. Because students would come from relevant work
backgrounds and (by virtue of enrolling on such a course) were expected to be
mature, motivated learners, it was hoped that they might have much to offer in terms
of experience and knowledge and form an effective community of practice. As
Wenger puts it, ‘The value of an institutionalized setting for learning often resides as
much in its community-building potential as in the pedagogical intentions of its
curriculum’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 208).

Many authors have emphasized the importance of performance evaluation in
education (Bruner, 1966; Gagne, 1985; Laurillard, 1993). Summative and forma-
tive assessment would be embedded throughout the course with a wide variety of
approaches including portfolios, programming exercises, online tests, examinations,
vivas, reports and problem-based assignments, in the belief that this would help

Figure 2. Relationship of delivery to development time for structured/dialogic delivery modes



 

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maintain focus and motivation. The result of this was that students would seldom
spend more than three weeks without the need to submit some form of assessed
work. Although efforts were made to make much of this assessment as authentic as
possible, in particular by relating it to the students’ workplace, the course leader had
some misgivings about the reliance on assessment to provide extrinsic motivation
(Whitehead, 1929; Illich, 1971; Holt, 1977).

Preparing for delivery

The CDT met face-to-face approximately monthly, using an asynchronous discus-
sion forum to facilitate the shared development of module specifications between
meetings. This small group were able to engender a strong sense of shared responsi-
bility and identity, which it was hoped would be replicated amongst student groups
once the course was running.

Once the course outline had been approved and module specifications agreed,
tutors from each of the four participating FE colleges were appointed to develop and
to deliver the course. Only two of the 20 or so tutors involved in preparation of the
first year’s modules had any experience of distance learning, let alone online delivery,
and only a handful had been involved in course development prior to this. Most were
excited by the challenge though a small but significant minority expressed scepticism
about the wisdom of choosing this method of delivery, preferring a traditional face-
to-face approach. All tutors were required to attend an online tutor training (OTT)
course created by one of the more experienced online tutors, based heavily on
Salmon’s five step model of e-moderating (Salmon, 2000).

An e-learning expert was employed to facilitate workshops in which module
outlines were prepared and development work shared amongst the teaching team.
This helped to encourage a strong sense of ownership of the modules by their devel-
opment teams. These sessions had a strong emphasis on developing module struc-
tures and associated static materials, with, perhaps, insufficient emphasis on dialogue.
For many tutors this was their first encounter with the course and its approach, so
these workshops influenced them strongly.

The CDT believed that they had anticipated some of the potential pitfalls of online
education, but it soon became evident that this was not so. The huge change in teach-
ing approach required and the cascade of systemic dependencies that it would set in
motion is the main topic for the rest of this paper.

The first two years

Twenty-eight students enrolled at the start of the first year. To compound this disap-
pointing start, one college recruited only three students, one of whom dropped out
almost immediately followed by a second a few months later. Within a couple of
months of starting, two of the colleges had amalgamated, with consequent upheavals
and uncertainties for staff and students alike.



 

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In the rush to prepare for the start of the course, it went almost unnoticed that a
small number of tutors had failed to attend the OTT course and that, of those who
had, only about half had successfully completed it by the time the course began. The
main reason given was the lack of time, but the consequent lack of experience of
dialogue-based learning proved problematic later.

A poor student retention rate was matched by a high turnover rate for staff.
Although another instance of the OTT course was run, this failed to keep pace with
the rapid staff turnover which in turn meant that the already over-stretched staff were
even less prepared for the processes of online teaching. To make matters worse, new
tutors lacked the sense of ownership of the process that motivated the founding team.

Running the course: the tutor experience

It became apparent early in the first year of the course that most tutors were relying
on familiar teaching methods and using the discussion boards only as an occasional
means of communication with the students. Despite extensive online and offline
encouragement this reliance on structure rather than dialogue did not improve
throughout the first two years of the course.

FE college tutors’ very full timetables contained discrete blocks of time when teach-
ing was supposed to occur for this course (typically a single block of three hours each
week, a mere thirteen percent of an average FE lecturer’s teaching time), militating
heavily against its asynchronous delivery

Given that virtually all the students on the course are working, by far the majority
of their study and communication occurred in the evenings or at weekends. Although
most tutors adapted to this pattern of working, it fitted very uneasily with the rest of
their over-filled timetables and their expectations that evenings and weekends should
be free from the demands of student contact.

Tutors found that dialogue-led delivery often took much longer than they had
anticipated. To save time it was often simpler to rely on more traditional methods
including a tendency to put off solving students’ problems until the scheduled face-
to-face session. This was exacerbated by the fact that many of the early course
modules involved the acquisition of specific skills and information (programming,
database design, simple Internet technologies and concepts). These topics were often
perceived as lending themselves more readily to a structured one-way mode of deliv-
ery. Communication was confined to clarifying misconceptions and discussing good
practice, tending to be directive rather than discursive.

Running the course: the student experience

The reason most often given for dropping out was and is students’ inability to cope
with the demands of their work and the course. However, it soon became clear that
some of their preconceptions about the course and their own learning processes were
at odds with the course ethos. Only a few were regular contributors to discussions,
with many content to simply log in, do the set reading/tasks and log out again without



 

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any dialogue. The large amount of assessment spread throughout the course was
over-demanding and demoralizing for many students. Those hard-pressed for time
got on with the essential reading and the assignments, and omitted the unassessed,
and therefore apparently unnecessary dialogue.

Although some students were willing to help each other out with corrections to
coding, good explanations and resource sharing, others saw helping each other as a
diversion from their own studies, failing to appreciate the benefits that can ensue from
teamwork and dialogue. Some students lacked confidence, and so avoided posting
questions or problems to the discussion forums, for fear of ridicule.

Perhaps because of their perceptions of education, combined with the demands of
their employers, many students valued the acquisition of skills and factual informa-
tion more highly than the surrounding processes of learning that can turn it into
useful knowledge.

Lack of timely feedback discouraged students from using the medium. One student
summed it up well: 

We do need more feedback to discussions and problems posted to the teamroom. Some
tutors are very good at this but others seem only to drop in once a week—and a week is a
long time on this course! Several students feel that, whatever the value of the classroom
contact, it should be possible to do the course entirely remotely.

The compound effect of all these factors was that in most modules, only staccato
discourse occurred, rarely stepping higher than Salmon’s third stage of Information
Exchange (Salmon, 2000).

A vicious circle

One tutor complained, ‘I have tried without much success to get students to have
discussions in the teamroom. One or two students may join in, but no one else does—
you can end up having a discussion with yourself.’ A student expressed the view,
‘teamroom activity breeds teamroom activity, and lethargy breeds lethargy.’

A vicious circle developed. A predominance of skills-based learning combined with
tutors’ reticence to encourage dialogue online meant that the discussion areas were
under-utilized. The fewer expectations placed on the students, the less they felt the
need to contribute.

At this point, Moore’s theory of transactional distance became very apparent. As
dialogue diminished, structure came to dominate. Students, insufficiently supported
by a learning community, came to rely increasingly on course notes. The more struc-
tured the course became, the fewer the opportunities for dialogue arose. The effects
of this on less autonomous learners were devastating.

Few of the students had acquired the skill to be autonomous learners in an
academic setting. The fact that most had responsible jobs in ‘white water’ environ-
ments (Vaill, 1996, p. 4), where change is the norm and learning must be a way of life
was not considered. For better or worse the course was built around a traditional
academic framework, so students needed help and guidance to explore issues and



 

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clarify concepts. In the absence of an effective discussion forum, the brief face-to-face
meetings, originally intended mainly to provide social cohesion, increasingly became
the main occasions for learning on the course. One student noted: 

Lessons are great, covering points missed and checking everything is as it should be, but
as everyone seems to realize team room could be used more for discussion and covering
points.

Torn between the demands of work and the need to participate in these contact
sessions, with inadequate structured resources and no community to turn to in
between, many students became disillusioned, and demotivated. By the end of the
first year, half of the students had left the course and the college with a single remain-
ing student left the programme.

With only two FE colleges now involved in delivery, the second year began.
Although recruitment was a little lower than that of the first year, slightly better reten-
tion rates reflected refinements in delivery and design, especially a slight reduction in
the assessment load. However, it was apparent that the course was still plagued by
systemic problems, driven both by the tutors and the students.

Away from structure, returning to dialogue

Senge argues that, in any system, structure is a key determinant of behaviour (Senge,
1993, pp. 40–41). The central problems of the course have been observed to be struc-
tural in nature, leading to systemic behaviours which hinged around a number of
inter-related issues. These in turn led to a cycle of ever-decreasing returns, excessive
workloads and a relative paucity of rich interactions in the virtual space. It was felt
necessary to break that cycle. It was not possible to radically improve the allocation
of time to tutors, and it was impractical to consider a major change in the surrounding
educational environment and timetabling. There was still no time to develop effective
structured learning materials. However, increasing dialogue seemed an achievable
target.

In collaboration with tutors, a simple ‘chunk and talk’ strategy was developed.
Students would be presented with a discussion forum as the entry point to each
module, in which the tutor would outline the tasks for the week (or chunk of several
weeks) and initiate a dialogue. By starting with a discussion, it was hoped that
students would focus much more on process rather than absorption of content, and
that there would be more of an emphasis on the learning community, reducing isola-
tion for the learners.

Chunking topics into logical units provided students with more control over their
own work patterns, although this was counterbalanced somewhat by the demands of
dialogue, participation in which required continual attention.

To help build a more dynamic learning community (and also because of the declin-
ing group sizes), the online teaching for both colleges was amalgamated, with a single
tutor responsible for leading the online discussion for each chunk of learning. Face-
to-face meetings would, however, still be led at each college by the local staff member.



 

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It was hoped that this would engender more collaboration amongst the teaching
team, and that as staff gained a greater understanding of the importance of online
communication and collaboration, they would find it easier to facilitate the develop-
ment of this sense of partnership amongst the student community.

To help assist tutors lost within an unfamiliar online environment, strong advice
was given to module designers to follow a pedagogy based on Kolb’s experiential
learning cycle (Kolb, 1984). This cycle of abstract conceptualization, reflective obser-
vation, active experimentation and concrete experience, with its focus on situated
learning, was seen to fit neatly with the work-related/work-based nature of the course
as well as providing a simple framework and easy-to-follow formula.

Summative assessment would be significantly reduced and what was left would be
embedded further into the practice of the course. Specifically, some assignments
required participation in online discussions, for example in designing the solution to
a problem or exploring recent technological developments

Some early results

The new approach has been implemented for one semester to the current cohort of
10–12 students per year group. Modules that are running for the first time have been
developed on the basis of this approach, while existing modules have been adapted to
a greater or lesser extent.

The results have not all been encouraging. Staff changes and the limitations
imposed in the hard-pressed FE sector have again resulted in insufficient time being
allowed to do the approach full justice and not all staff have taken the advice to use
the Kolb cycle as a framework. Similarly, although there is general recognition of the
need for discussion, several tutors continue to use forums to ask simple, answerable
questions rather than exploring the problems and issues that allow learners to explore
concepts and engage in dialogue.

Just over 60% of all accesses to the system over the past semester were in the
communication areas. Analysis suggests a roughly similar proportion in previous
years (60% discussion for the first year the course ran, 57% for the second) which,
given potential inaccuracies and the fact that the systems in use are not directly
comparable, is disappointing. However, the use of communication areas varies with
year group, with rates of 64% for first year students, 61% for second year students
and 57% for third year students.

There are still very few deep conversations going on, with the majority of messages
concerned with either problem solving or the process, such as giving assignment dates
and schedules. Worse, although it is difficult to draw direct comparisons due to the
different organization of the sites, there seems little difference in the actual number
of messages posted when compared with previous years.

One positive outcome has been observed. This year, the most active students have
posted around three times as many messages as the least active, whereas last year the
ratio was greater than eighteen to one. This broadening of participation in dialogue



 

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will lead to a greater awareness of the presence of others, hence reducing the loneli-
ness and isolation that less active participants experienced before.

Retention rates have improved when compared with the same period in previous
years. Discussion forums are not the only reason for this: contributory factors
include a more thorough and honest interview process, a reduction in assessment
load, greater experience of tutors, a more reliable online environment, more
diverse discussion groups, better pedagogy and reduced dependence on tutor-
prepared materials.

The move to a more discussion-oriented process has not been universally popular
with our first cohort of students, now in their third year. It is directly responsible for
the loss of one student from this group who commented: 

I’ll be back next year when, hopefully, the course will not discriminate against students
who cannot make timely contributions to discussions (or the University pays my mortgage
so I can give it priority over my employer!)

I’m off now to read a few books over the coming months just to prove to myself, at least,
that it is possible to learn without discussion.

Most students who joined in the first year of the course are of necessity autonomous
learners, as any who were not have already left. For such learners it may seem an
unnecessary imposition to require them to be involved in a collaborative learning
process. It is also possible that insufficient attention has been paid to the significant
benefits of peripheral involvement or ‘lurking’, which might still enable learners to
enjoy the benefits of internalized dialogue. Preece suggests that this kind of involve-
ment may be highly immersive, leading to strong senses of belonging to the commu-
nity despite lack of direct interaction (Preece, 2000, pp. 87–90).

Conclusion

The evolution of this course continues and this paper is just a snapshot capturing its
progress so far from the authors’ highly situated perspective. There are few immuta-
ble conclusions to be drawn from the experiences presented here, but several issues
seem worth emphasizing.

Firstly, the struggle for predominance between dialogue and structure has shifted
throughout the course’s short life and shows no signs of abating, despite well-inten-
tioned efforts to force it in a particular direction. This lends credence to Moore’s
theory of transactional distance: as structure increases, dialogue decreases and vice
versa.

Secondly, it is difficult to implement something new when surrounded by self-
organizing forces that tend towards equilibrium and reinforcement of the status
quo.

Though by no means original, the following conclusions also bear repeating.
Firstly, the transition from face-to-face teaching to online learning requires a real-

istic (and large) allocation of resources. High structure requires a lot of up-front
investment (Laurillard, 1993), whereas high dialogue needs this to be ongoing.



 

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Secondly, transforming teaching practice in the radical way required to implement
a successful online course requires a thorough but sensitive approach to educating
tutors as well as students.

Thirdly, in the absence of tacit social cues, weaknesses in pedagogy are accentuated
in an online environment. Those social cues are significant: ‘Efficient communication
relies not on how much can be said, but on how much can be unsaid’ (Seely Brown
& Duguid, 2000). To help overcome this, the authors believe that pedagogic theories
should be explicitly applied as part of the strategic underpinning of a course.

Finally, maintaining regular face-to-face contact throughout the module encour-
ages avoidance of online discussion. An alternative approach, using concentrated
face-to-face periods at greater intervals, is currently being considered.

Despite the setbacks, the authors still believe in the importance of the principal
strategy of building a successful learning community. If our aim is to produce inde-
pendent, thinking and questioning graduates, we must be prepared to cultivate and
nurture a collaborative online community in which geographical distance becomes
less relevant as transactional distance shrinks.

This paper has largely dwelt on the things that have gone wrong. It has made little
mention of the fact that those students who remain are highly effective learners,
achieving high commendations from internal and external examiners alike. It has said
little of the tutors’ extraordinary dedication and care for students, nor of their high
levels of skill and expertise that have been brought to bear on the course, nor the
close-knit teams that make it all possible.

The complex system that we recognize as a course is made of the interactions of its
own parts and with other systems, including those of which it is a constituent. Like
many complex systems, it learns and develops with an internal dynamic very different
from the sum of its components, not always in the ways that its leaders expect or
intend. The movement from structure to dialogue and back again is one that can be
strongly influenced, but seldom fully controlled. That control arises at least in part
from the systemic interactions within the system itself.

Despite the inadequate recruitment, the high student drop-out rate, the rapid staff
turnover, the unplanned disasters and the unintentional consequences of intentional
change, the eSystems course is in many ways a successful system. It has strong inter-
nal cohesion, yet it is fuelled by diversity. In adversity it has displayed an adaptive
dynamic and continues to evolve, despite as much as because of those who try to
control it.

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	Figure 1. Relationship between dialogue and structure
	Transactional distance in a blended learning environment
	Jon Dron*,a, Catharine Seidelb & Gabrielle Littenb
	Figure 2. Relationship of delivery to development time for structured/dialogic delivery modes