The twentieth century has seen traditional schooling reach its physiological limits. This is certainly true for modern industrialized countries where, from the XVIth century on, schooling has developed essentially into a service for children and adolescents carried out in specialized structures having fairly uniform spatial and temporal connotations. These countries now offer sequentially ordered instruction over a period of years to almost the entire population. Laws obliging attendance at school, first limited to elementary instruction and then part of secondary school instruction, now tend to cover the whole second cycle. At the same time, an increasing part of the population is gaining access to some form of third cycle instruction, including the beginning level of university studies.

This is not to say that schooling is uniformly distributed among the population. Economic and social conditions as well as political factors still make themselves felt. Nonetheless, the century now coming to an end may rightfully be considered a turning point in the history of education (1)

Access to schooling has ceased to be a prerogative of the few and is now a necessity for everyone. A basic stock of knowledge is required simply to survive. Our more complex societies tend in fact to marginalize those individuals who lack the intellectual tools to understand the world around them and are thus unable to participate knowledgeably in civic life and in the work force. This new kind of marginalization is characterized, not by an inability to procure the material goods necessary for life, but rather by an inability to grasp changing events and thus a cultural submission to the explanations (and, potentially, the manipulations) of whoever controls the sources of ready-made information .(2)

In a word, schooling for a good number of years has become a way of life during youth. And yet not many decades separate us from the time when child labor was rampant in our factories and fields and when, overcome by work and want, haggard children became precocious adults(3) . The development of schooling may therefore be seen as part of a general transformation of our living standards. As the years included in the 'protected age' have increased, our youngsters have developed sounder bodies and, at the same time, and have had more opportunity to discover, develop and manifest their intellectual interests and abilities.

This is certainly a progress. Yet the gradual extension of the years of schooling has also had drawbacks. For example,physically mature young people simply cannot be deprived of their autonomy for ever longer periods of time and kept indefinitely dependent on adults for the satisfaction of their needs. Today's youth is increasingly unsatisfied with the time required to finish sequentially ordered schooling. Youngsters perceive such schooling as an 'enforced custody' not entirely justified by the complexity of the knowledge and skills required to participate in today's work force. They see that the custody also serves the unavowed and dubious purpose of attenuating the contradictions within the adult world.

In conclusion, the historical cycle during which generalized schooling has emerged is now showing signs of coming to an end. There is still work to be done, of course. We have yet to bring schooling to all social strata and to guarantee that everyone - independently of their social status or economic/cultural deprivation - reaches a satisfactory level of instruction in both qualitative and quantitative terms. This does not mean, however, that we ought to prolong indefinitely the number of years spent at school. Such a policy would most likely create more problems than it could solve or attempt to solve.

1. it was possible to predetermine the contents of a programme of education before a given generation embarked upon it; this determined a high degree of stability in the school system;
2. what was taught at school was what was expected to be known throughout life - including at work - after school.

Today, however, education can no longer count on the almost total stability of the instruction to be given. It takes twelve or thirteen years - according to the country - to finish primary and secondary school and during this time, quite long by today's standards, the entire framework of knowledge in a given field may have radically changed. True, a certain number of abilities learned will tend to conserve their usefulness, in particular those of a more formal nature. But it is also true that the abilities that bear most directly on a given job may be just the ones affected by today's accelerated rhythm of change. As a result, it has become necessary to keep a continual watch over the contents of school programmes, putting emphasis on those elements which are most educational in the long term (for example, language arts, history, mathematics, etc.); at the same time, it has become equally necessary to consider sequential schooling as the beginning and not the end of professional training - training which must be reviewed, completed and updated, and even completely modified in some cases, during the course of a working life.

This has produced an increased demand for learning, generally of a highly qualified kind, from adults who quite often are already working. Often what they demand is not an additional degree to further their careers but rather additional education to comprehend the changing world around them through a better grasp of what is happening in their professional world. In other cases, the demand is from a composite public - people who, for the most divergent reasons and at almost any age, realize that the education received at school is not enough or that their intellectual interests have changed and who therefore wish to fill in the gaps. It is unlikely that adults such as this can hope to find satisfaction in the traditional school system. In response to this rising demand, many countries have organized systems of distance teaching .(5)

The various features characterizing the traditional educational setup may be summarized as follows (see figure 1):

• unity of time
• unity of space
• uniformity of the educational offer
• definition of the teacher's role
• existence of a social mandate to educate
• definition of the student's role
• power to certify.

• the first hypothesis is that distance education does not constitute a scholastic mode of instruction and that a distance education setup should not be considered a 'school', while
• the second hypothesis is that distance education is one of many historical variants on the theme 'school', taken in its widest acceptation.

This paper will attempt to demonstrate the validity of the second hypothesis. In other words, it will maintain that time and space are not essential attributes of the concept 'school' but rather are accessory features generally associated with that concept, due to the historical development of schooling so far. It will argue that the unity of time and space are no longer necessary, given the vast changes in the modes of communication characterizing modern society -- modes capable of extending the limits of space beyond what students see before them, and of conserving and distributing educational messages upon request. The remaining features listed above, on the other hand, are still to be considered essential to defining 'schooling', whatever form it takes.

The most formidable challenge raised by research into the processes of teaching and learning over the past few decades has been to find a way to help each student overcome her or his learning difficulties by individualizing teaching strategies. This challenge can be met by distance teaching but requires an approach which creates positive attitudes towards learning in an educational setup where there is no or little direct interaction between teacher and student. For example, learners must be led to see distance instruction, not as a fall back dictated by necessity, but rather as an opportunity to organize their schooling more flexibly (they can dedicate as much time as they need, when they are freest) and less monolithically (they can handle other work, family or social obligations more easily at the same time).

Learners must also be led to see how mindful of them their instructional programme actually is. They should realize that, if their course of study was perfectly standardized, there would have been no need to carefully screen them upon enrollment or check and certify their progress throughout their learning cycle; moreover, the published part of their course could have been distributed more easily through bookstores. In conclusion, learners should be led to see their distance education course as a highly personalized enterprise, not an anonymous catch-all for a heterogeneous public. In other words, they should see that a distance teaching programme, properly conducted, constitutes a school, i.e., an institution engaged in creating the learning conditions necessary for every student to attain the educational goals that the institution is delegated to further.

Two consequences derive from getting learners - and the general public - to consider a distance teaching programme as a school.

First, in general terms, it places distance teaching squarely in the line of development of 'schooling' as such, rooted as we know it in the period of European religious reformation and fully institutionalized only in recent times. In this light, distance teaching may simply be considered an adaptation of that system to a new, historically determined demand. This does noT mean, however, that distance education constitutes a watershed, i.e. a dividing line in education, separating 'old-fashioned' on-premise schooling from 'alternative' instructional modes. In other words, distance teaching should be seen as a continuation of (and a supplement to) traditional schooling but not as a substitute for it. Educators engaged in distance teaching should therefore not accept, even implicitly, the thesis held by 'de-schoolers' according to which traditional schooling can be replaced by information distribution networks. Instead, they should work for a diversified and specialized educational offer, one which takes adequately into account changing demands, new age brackets, knowledge turn-over, and evolving educational requirements in the workplace.

Secondly, in specifically didactic terms, it is important that distance teaching programmes be seen as 'schools' if we want to stave off the common misconception according to which distance learning comes down to pure self-study or 'do-it-yourself' education - a student at home pouring over a course book unaided is, in fact, the picture that all too often comes to the layman's mind. But only in its widest acceptation may we say that distance teaching is any teaching founded on the minimal requirement of being able to read on one's own. Indeed, if we were to adopt this acceptation, we would have to say that distance teaching started with the invention of writing; not only, but we would have to call books of any kind 'distance teaching courses '!

In a way, of course, there is a bit of truth in this last affirmation: we may think of all writers - whatever genre they practice - as 'distance teachers' for they convey something to someone over time and space (even if only to themselves, as in diary keeping or intimist writing). It makes no difference whether the writers feel are 'teaching' or simply 'communicating', 'discussing', 'reflecting out loud', or 'imagining on paper'. Whatever their intent, writers have something in mind when they pick up a pen and produce a text to represent it; moreover, that text is read by a public (if only by the writers themselves as they write) interested in checking over or checking out what has been put down on paper. Thus, technically speaking, a form of 'distance teaching' may be said to take place whenever there is a minimal temporal and/or spatial interval between the moment of writing and the moment of reading any informative text.

It is obvious, however, that we are not adopting such an overly generic view of distance teaching here. Rather, we are addressing the specific question of what constitutes a 'distance school', i.e., an organization purposefully designed to help a designated public acquire the knowledge that that public needs. Our insistence on the term 'school' makes it clear that, in speaking of distance teaching, we are in fact addressing the problem of 'instruction without co-presence': in other words, the designated public does not simply need to be informed, it must be instructed and, what is more, in a way that overcomes the unfamiliar physical gap separating that public from whoever is to do the instructing - through recourse, for example, to technological means and special didactic techniques. All this is quite a bit more than just 'writing a text'.

This last point must be clearly understood to avoid another common, superficial conception of 'distance teaching' which equates it with any delivery of lessons through technological means. What makes distance education truly 'education' (over a distance) is not the technology but the didactic organization putting that technology to work efficaciously. A TV broadcast of a lesson or a telecommunications link with an educational site do not necessarily teach any more than a book does or can. Equating distance teaching with 'high tech delivery of lessons' is simply another way of erroneously viewing distance teaching as pure self-study - 'do-it-yourself education with the bells and whistles', one might call it. Instead, it is much, much more.

As pedagogical research has developed, it has become clear that effective teaching requires, above all, an effective analysis of just those dynamics. This has meant distinguishing the various functions and giving future teachers a specialization in each one of them - or, at least up to a point. The high degree of specialization required by certain functions makes it improbable that a single teacher can be adequately trained to handle them all optimally. Thus, coherent, quality teaching is no longer seen to depend on the presence of a single, brilliant teacher; it can also be attained by team effort in implementing a coherent, quality educational project. This comes down to saying that, adequately planned, an educational project can be a success more or less independently of the brilliance of the various people charged with carrying out each function.

Distance teaching augments this specialization of roles - and, in fact, such specialization is the only way to attain a high degree of interaction with students when co-presence is reduced to a minimum. This specialization concerns three fields, each with its own characteristics and requirements:

• planning. The educational offer and target public must be clearly defined; appropriate didactic strategies must be devised; necessary didactic aids must be procured; modes of communication must be established; time and resources for individual help must be allocated;
• implementation. Materials and aids must be produced, assembled and made to work together. In distance teaching this involves a considerable period of preparation and requires domain competence as well as distance teaching competence.
• execution. Managing a working distance education programme involves a large number of operations designed to guarantee the regularity of communication with students: sending out home study materials; registering returned tests, correcting them and analyzing the data; replying to students with messages informing them of their shortcomings and suggesting further study. All of these activities require supervision and coordination and this, in itself, is a specialized function. Furthermore, profiles must be kept of individual student's progress; data must be gathered to evaluate the quality of the materials sent out for study; and, last but not least, periodic evaluations of the overall effectiveness of the project must be made.

We may summarize the entire monitoring process, aiming at guaranteeing the functionality of both teaching and learning, under three headings, which indicate the kind of data the control process needs and the operation to be carried out with that data:

• initial analysis of the each student as a potential learner. Before the teaching cycle begins, highly detailed information must be gathered on all of the students, giving their past studies, their work experience if any, the reasons which led them to enroll in the distance course, and so on;
• immediate verification of learning. This is decidedly the most onerous and delicate task: upon it depends the capacity of the programme to offer adequate remedial assistance and thus help learners overcome the various difficulties inevitably encountered when learning a new subject. The programme must therefore be able to adapt itself, after each intermediary check, to the newly formulated profile of each student; in practice, each lesson installment sent out to a student after a check will vary in content, at least partially, on the basis of the updated profile of that student's accumulated knowledge, weaknesses, learning style, and so on. The feedback obtained also permits the programme to evaluate its own effectiveness and the overall progress of the 'student body' - what problems tend to arise, how well does the material seem to fit students' needs, how reliably do the checks verify what they are intended to verify, and so on;
• final exam. This test is designed to evaluate the end product obtained by the programme as a whole, for each enrolled student.

In distance learning it is important to have an interpretative teaching model to which to refer. In this paper we refer to the clearly delineated model put forward by Johan Clauberg in 1652. In his Logica vetus et nova, Clauberg bases his interpretation of a rational didactics on three fundamental dimensions (see Fig.2). A question corresponds to each one.

The first question is Quid sit tradendum et quo fine? (what must be taught and why?). The space for theoretical reflection on teaching is thus opened up. This is essential if cultural choices in line with the set objectives are to be made.

The second question is Quis trditurus, quis accepturus? (what are the characteristics of the organiser and transmitter of the teaching message and what are those of the receiver of this message?). Suitable answers to these questions require careful consideration of the psychological and sociological problems that appear in a specific training context.

The third and final question is Quomodo quid tradere conveniat (how would it be preferable to convey the teaching message?). The answer varies according to time (resources that technological development have gradually made available for teaching) and space (the availability of resources must be considered in relation to the social and economic context of a specific training initiative).

It is impossible to define a teaching strategy without providing answers to these questions posed by Clauberg. Teaching is not free of restrictions. On the contrary, in order to make effective choices it is essential to consider one's margins for manoeuvre (in terms of resources, finances, the characteristics of the demand, etc.). Choices can only be made if the context has been adequately explored and if the information gleaned is used to think up alternative solutions, corresponding to alternative interpretations of the teaching activity.

One alternative consists in limiting the activity to the production of materials and material organisation, interpreting distance teaching as a kind of guided study. In practice this means that once the contents of the course have been decided and once the materials have been distributed over a set time-span, it is sufficient to provide bibliographies and book lists, without producing texts. In the study guides students will find both suggestions as to how to apply their knowledge and criteria for self-evaluation.

It is important to stress that this solution is much less limiting than it may seem, especially if the learners have followed academic courses in the past. To enrol in a guided study course, in fact, is one step further than being self-taught. Access to selected bibliographies and book lists is already an important contribution to learning. Indications as to how to apply the acquired competence assume the value of a confirmation that the activities have been completed. How many taught university courses, one wonders, provide students with material as well organised?

The advantage of this alternative is the drastic reduction in the burden of writing materials and managing a course. The disadvantage is that the teaching cannot be individually tailored and feedback on the course is difficult to obtain. This alternative, it must be said, interprets the role of teaching at a minimum level because it presupposes limited interaction with students.

Another alternative could consist in adding to the first alternative a controlling apparatus. In this case the complications deriving from the need to establish a channel of communication with students must be accepted. The channel of communication will provide information regarding evaluation and feedback on the quality of the services offered through a centralised service. It is no doubt a great advantage to maintain the procedure set up under controlling circumstances (for example it becomes possible to test the validity of the choices made). This second alternative, which requires greater interaction with students, provides a more committed interpretation of teaching.

The third alternative is the closest to the "scholastic" concept of study. It consists in a complex simulation of a teaching context with direct teacher-student interaction. In this simulation great effort is expended to find solutions to compensate for the absence of direct interaction. To choose this alternative means planning and drafting all the components of a course and accepting the organisational and managerial burden of the need to establish interactive communication with the students. Distance teaching, in fact, should be interpreted as a learning proposal that presents the same study materials and objectives for all students enrolled in the course but adapts itself to individual needs.

No less important when defining a strategy for distance teaching are the choices regarding technical communications and work organisation. Both these aspects are linked to another essential point, which is the extent to which opportunities provided by technological advancement should play a role. If all these issues are examined together, there is one clear conclusion: the more complicated the functions are at the centre, the simpler they are at the periphery. Therefore what level of complexity the receivers of the course are able to deal with must be established, as well as what technical equipment is considered necessary for the students to be able to participate in the activity. Obviously the answers to these questions will range widely between two extremes: from the greatest complexity and most advanced technology at the centre to the complete shift of complications and resources to the periphery.

Of these two extremes, the one which envisages high complexity and availability of technological resources at the centre is closer to the prevailing logic in recent developments in research on teaching. According to this logic, in a process of teaching/learning the burden of adaptation falls to a great extent on the school. This means that the students' tasks must be simplified to the full and their participation in operations connected to course management kept to a minimum. Furthermore, the availability of technological equipment should not be taken for granted (televisions and telephones can now be considered uniformly distributed throughout the country, while the same is not true of computer links and Internet).

Under today's conditions in the development of resources for distance teaching, this choice implies having recourse as far as possible to the automation of operations connected with teaching organisation and management, from the updating of archives to realising interventions to help compensate for learning difficulties, and personalising the teaching proposal.

The composition of the learning materials packages should reflect the teaching strategy for which we have considered the characteristics. It is important to guarantee that teaching at a distance is able to absolve the same functions as teaching in the classroom. These functions are:

• to motivate students to learn
• to communicate the course contents
• to consolidate learning through applications
• to differentiate learning paths according to individual needs
• to maintain the procedure under control conditions

1. even though one can be assured that anyone who enrols in a distance learning course (especially in a university context) has a basically positive attitude, it is important to encourage students to come up with specific motivations for each task proposed. Students must be made aware of the course's aims and of the commitments they are required to make (and these aims should be made explicit). They should also be able to relate the various operations requested by the course to its global aims (in this sense it is essential that part of the communication addressed to students regard aspects of organisation), and to connect what they are studying with their past experience (continuity with previous experience could be highlighted by exemplifications and applied exercises).
2. the course contents should be communicated by means of specifically written texts. These texts should present the information level by level, sub-dividing it in smaller segments with their own sub-titles. Students should also be self-sufficient as far as achieving the aims of the course is concerned. Clearly text does not only mean printed matter. It includes any kind of organised message, whatever container is chosen for it. Students must be able to perceive that the material provided is actually what is needed, though they are obviously free to go into the subject at greater depth if they wish.
3. consolidating learning takes place by means of application exercises. These exercises should follow every segment of text and should be conceived so as to induce students to go back over their study and reorganise what they have learnt in order to deal with specific issues and solve specific problems. The exercises probably take up more of the students' time than the materials. It is therefore all the more important that through them positive cognitive and affective interaction is triggered.
4. differentiating learning paths means providing students with teaching supplements that correspond to individual needs. It is important, then, to put forward personalised segments of the learning itinerary on the basis of the information gleaned regarding previous segments.
5. the way in which advancement is controlled is a crucial element in the quantity and quality of the interaction that takes place between the teaching structure and students. It is therefore important to plan on frequent occasions for testing and to set up data archives that both support the teaching decisions of the moment and provide a picture over a period of time of the activity undertaken. It must be added that the possibility of introducing forms of individualised teaching depends, as it does in traditional teaching situations, on the quality and the speed with which the information gleaned through the testing apparatus is made available.

• the availability of more than one organisational model
• plans of differentiated solutions for each aspect of the teaching activity
• setting up reliable and efficient management systems
• finding technical solutions to guarantee rapid communications from and to the students
• increasingly automated systems for data processing and increased specialisation in some teaching functions, especially those linked to testing and to personalising learning paths.

D

• in a minimalist interpretation of the term, any kind of teaching aimed at students over a wide geographical area is considered "distance teaching" even when no school-like structure is envisaged (with obvious consequences for the quality of teaching). This interpretation is a feature of initiatives which send messages (by post, radio, television) with some systematicity and sequentiality, usually accompanied by recommendations on how to organise a study programme.
• in a second interpretation, the term "distance" evokes a physical condition. The attempt is to overcome this condition by means of solutions that simulate the classroom teaching, thus recreating the function of a school. This interpretation depends on functional forms of exchange of information between teaching promoters and receivers of the learning message. A crucial factor in the simulation is the possibility of establishing interaction with real consequences on students' progress. The strategic line described before lies within this interpretation.
• a third interpretation concerns itself above all with overcoming the condition of physical detachment directly. There are many solutions. Students can be given support through decentralised supervisors (mentors) who supervise study plans, advise students on how to proceed, distribute materials. check up on whether exercises have been done, follow up on laboratory work, make sure tests are undertaken, help arrange relations with the central structure, etc. Other solutions include arranging study plans that envisage part of the work at home and part in the classroom in the central structure or in periphery structures, or an alternation of home and classroom study according to the contents of the course. These solutions, which try to clse the gap between "distance" and "classroom" teaching present advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that for at least part of the course personal contact between teachers and students can be established. The disadvantages are that the cost is relatively high and the teachers' varying professional skills could produce conditions of uncontrolable variability in results.

The history of teaching in recent decades provides clear evidence of the fact that this is not so. We have witnessed a succession of technical tools, and every time attitudes follow the same pattern. To start with we are trustingly expectant, we become curious as the new tool becomes available to us, and then we soon lose interest. It would therefore be a mistake to link the destiny of distance teaching to the consensus reached temporarily over this or that innovation.

It is more reasonable, though certainly less visible, to strive towards a progressive improvement in teaching models and to use the tools which present themselves at that time to their full capacity but in full knowledge of the fact that they are only a temporary solution, soon to be replaced by newer technological resources. This more cautious approach does not mean that important areas of innovation for distance learnign cannot be identified. These should be able to absolve the functions needed to guarantee that the teaching apparatus can achieve its aims.

Printed text books are still essential (and as yet there is little chance that they can be substituted). Developments in new technologies offer significant opportunities to improve procedures for analysing characteristics, to produce materials more rapidly, to integrate sound and pictures with words, to put together and take apart component parts in order to produce tailor-made materials packages. These are all important steps forward but they can in no way substitute the primary need for good basic text books, written in response to rigorous didactic criteria.

A second area is that of iconic communication, for which television plays a vital role. The importance of television is often overplayed, to the extent that solutions for distance teaching that consist in television messages alone have been advanced. In other cases, the advantages of television broadcasts are exaggerated by describing positive past experience and by detracting from the enormous amount of work that has gone into planning and setting up other components of the course on which most of the teaching activity depends. Other possibilities will be opened up by new developments in digital technology. It will soon be possible to be more flexible and provide students with archives they would not have dreampt of being able to use, etc.

A third area regards the use of computers. In this area too there are extremists. Considering this is a field in which innovation makes machines obsolete in very little time, there is always the risk that while one is waiting for the newest product one does not exploit the old one to the full. In distance learning, computers offer remarkable teaching opportunities, ranging from managing exercises, simulations, and rationalising evaluation and testing techniques. Other opportunities challenge the concept of distance. A computer hooked up to internet allows students to interact in real time with the structure and with teachers. Thus conditions in a distance learning situation become similar, in terms of interaction, to other classroom situations.

These considerations hold true if one aims the distance teaching proposal at a great number of people casually distributed over a wide area. They are obviously less true if it is aimed at a limited number of people, or if one is working within a research project specifically aiming to verify the possibilities offered by new technology. For example, in the post-degree distance learning courses at the Department of the Science of Education of the University of Rome, the availability of specific equipment is not taken for granted. Yet, in parallel to the ordinary teaching activity, experiments are conducted using technological resources. If the students are to take part in these experiments they are required to be hooked up to Internet and have an email address. 

Notes to the text:

1. See B. Vertecchi (ed.), Il secolo della scuola [The Century of the School], Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1995.
2. The last part of this century is beginning to reveal the contradictory aspects of our educational systems such as they have developed so far. There are signs of regression, among which the phenomenon of "reacquired illiteracy" involving an ever larger percentage of the adult population. It must be kept in mind that reacquired illiteracy -- the progressive loss of ability to read and write affects subjects who have benefited from a good number of years of education in their youth. This phenomenon clearly calls into question what we mean by "schooling"; in other words, while schooling remains necessary, it is no longer sufficient to guarantee the widespread possession of the intellectual skills considered fundamental in our culture. Several countries are now investigating the phenomenon of reacquired illiteracy. The most exhaustive study is the one conducted by the Statistical Institute of Canada, with the participation of the statistical institutes of other nations such s the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
3. It is no longer a secret that a relationship exists between prolonged schooling and juvenile unrest. In the United States, for example, juvenile unrest -- especially of the aggressive, urban variety -- has grown to such an extent that an entire area of research, "urban education", has been created to study it. This is not to say, of course, that there is a simple cause-effect relationship between schooling and juvenile unrest; many other factors are involved, not least of which is the poor quality of instruction given by inner city schools.
4. Reliable estimates limit the life-span of much of contemporary knowledge to only a few years. This, of course, does not hold true for all domains; but the rapid turnover of items in the inventories of certain domains of knowledge raises the problem of how to keep individuals up-dated in those domains throughout the course of their lives.
5. The first attempts at distance teaching in the form of correspondence courses date back more than 150 years. These courses consisted of highly simplified lessons sent out in instalments and usually concerned how to do specific tasks. By the end of the nineteenth century in the United States, university correspondence courses began to appear.
6. An overview of the problems involved in setting up a distance teaching program may be found in D. Keegan, Principi diistruzione a distanza, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1994