1. Breaking down the traditional notion that a talking teacher is the most effective strategy for communicating curriculum. While this motive has not been exclusive to distance education programmes, it has been most systematically applied in such programmes. Nevertheless, many face-to-face courses and programmes at all levels of education incorporate use of instructionally designed resources, as educators have learned the limitations of lecture-based strategies for communicating information to students. It is important to stress that this motive does not imply any intrinsic improvements in quality of learning experience. The extent to which shifting communication of curriculum to instructionally designed resources leads to improvement in the quality of education is entirely dependent on the quality of the resources developed. Experience has demonstrated that, while spending more money on educational resource development does not necessarily lead to improvements in quality, under-investment in design of such resources is very likely to diminish the quality of the final resource. Many educational programmes operate under severe financial constraints, and are not able to make investments of sufficient scale in the resources that they develop. Thus, while the motive may be to use resources to communicate curriculum more effectively, investments made in designing those resources often do not allow for achievement of the intended goal.
2. Directing a significantly larger proportion of total expenditure to the design and development of high quality resources, as a strategy for building and assuring the quality of educational provision. This motive is linked to the previous one, but contains notable differences. Importantly, many people motivated by the desire to use resources to communicate curriculum are not similarly motivated by a desire to shift patterns of expenditure in this way (or are unable to do so because institutional financial policies make it impossible). This can lead to the problems outlined above, where communication of curriculum via resources rather than a talking teacher does not lead to improvements in the quality of pedagogy. There is, however, another tension that this motive creates when people do seek to shift patterns of expenditure in this way. This can occur when additional money is actually invested in design of resources, but this investment is then still spread over very small student numbers. The consequence of this can be to drive up significantly the per-student cost of the educational experience, leading to unsustainable educational practices. This practice is prevalent in many traditionally contact educational institutions. Its impact on public education may be profoundly unsettling in the long term, as it is proliferating unsustainable educational programmes.
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