Interest in asynchronous and distance education is partly fueled by the widespread availability of technologies such as the Internet, and partly by the perception that the rapid change of technological innovation requires lifelong learning and hence non-traditional modes of education delivery [3].
Our exploration is proceeding in the context of distance and asynchronous education at the department of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM). UHM has access to the Hawaii Interactive Television System (HITS), which uses analog microwave transmission, to deliver courses to other UH campuses, some on other islands. This system is expensive and only available by prior reservation. Due to these limitations, interaction for distance courses is typically limited to interaction during the scheduled lecture period or by telephone or e-mail. Asynchronous access is achieved by e-mail and by going to the local library to review videotapes. A specific example is the Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC), located on an island without a major research university: professionals who work at the center and at nearby high-technology firms currently take asynchronous (web- and e-mail based) or evening HITS courses to obtain master's degrees or simply keep up with their fields.
As is true for other forms of formal interpersonal communication, the traditional delivery of education has many components, including face-to-face interaction in lectures (one-to-many) and office hours (one-to-one or parliamentary), and asynchronous communication in the form of assignments, projects, lecture notes, and testing. Of these, testing often involves trust issues that in many cases render current forms of ADC unsuitable, but the remaining forms of communication seem well-suited to asynchronous and distance delivery. To preserve quality of interaction, informal modes of interaction including assistance in labs for projects or assignments and simple questions often asked before and after lectures must also be supported when converting a class to an ADC format.
We emphasize that we are not talking about courseware, i.e. educational material that can be used independently of teachers. Instead, we are interested in providing teachers and students with better tools for reaching each other. Open-source software development has long used ADC (mostly e-mail) without reducing or removing the need for programmers; likewise we foresee ADC being used to enhance the quality and availability of education without substantially altering the model under which education is provided.