Web-based education is often associated to distance education, while - in the practice- its is also widely used to support presential learning. Actually, the difference between distance education and presential education is fading for several reasons.
- Many distance education students do not live far away from the physical school butmhave tight time constraints (often they work). Asynchronous communication provides them with time flexibility, a growing concern in our society.
- Many Web-based courses combine distance and presence, which makes learning environments more robust. Whatever technology is used, all tools have intrinsic limitations. These limitations do, over time, become real obstacles to learning. Even a small amount of co-presence may solve some of the problems that can hardly be solved at distance. Examples are activities that require presence such as: launching a new project, complex technical assistance, repairing deep conceptual misunderstanding, negotiation.
These points are important for vocational training, university courses and lifelong learning. In primary and secondary schools, the opposite balance is found: so far, Internet-based activities are there to enrich presential learning activities, not to replace them. The enrichment can be just an add-on, for instance the teachers points to Web pages that the students should read. This is not the case for virtual learning environments. We argue in section 2.6 that they influence the way teachers teach and thereby contribute to renew teaching methods.
