Design of distance learning presentations

That interactive distance learning (IDL) is becoming more and more popular is a fact; but the effort required to design and present an effective IDL course is almost a "trade secret". Like most tasks, the time and energy that one spends can vary from little to tremendous; so the aim of this paper is to outline the middle ground, and discuss the differences between traditional course and IDL preparations. For purposes of this paper, IDL is based on a system that allows students who are physically separated from the teacher, to interact in real time through both video and audio. This is a high-end system that requires a lot of design time.