Technology, Transactional Distance, and Instructor Effectiveness: An Empirical Investigation
研究美国西北部一所大学使用互动电视系统进行远程教学的情况，发现影响教师评价的不是技术本身，而是师生间的交易距离（对话与结构），这对远程教育实践有启示。
For more than 15 years, a large university in the northwestern United States employed an interactive television system to provide statewide distance learning. Many business professors contended that this technology adversely affected students' ratings of their effectiveness, especially at the receiving sites. Our analysis of instructor-evaluation data from 406 students in 15 courses taught by 14 instructors across 3 campuses revealed that the distance learning technology per se was not the problem; rather, it was transactional distance (i.e., dialogue and structure) as defined by Moore (1980, 1991) that affected perceived effectiveness. Transactional distance refers to the quality of the teaching and learning interaction between instructors and students who are geographically separated. We conclude that although interactive technology worked well for distance education, maintaining instructor effectiveness (i.e., lower transactional distance) results in a trade-off with efficiency.