Technological Distance: A New Way of Conceptualizing the “Distance” in Distance Learning

This paper presents the concept of technological distance, which describes a gap between technologies (broadly defined to include methods, tools, principles, and processes) available for a learner to learn, and those needed to complete that learning. This gap is a measure of both the participation and autonomy of learners in the process. Available technologies may include those provided by teachers and institutions as well as from many others, most notably including the learners themselves. The technologies that make up the assembly—pedagogies and regulations as much as digital devices or classrooms—are only components, however. What matters most is how learners fill the gaps between them to achieve their learning goals. These are fundamentally situated, idiosyncratic, and human. Technological distance provides new insights into other models that use spatial metaphors, such as the presences of communities of inquiry and transactional distance.