Abstract:

The World Wide Web is being seen as the future medium for the delivery of distance education courses to a global market. Yet distance educators are only just beginning to understand the characteristics of this medium. This article explores one aspect of the way in which the Web functions as a medium of communication that could have particular significance for its use in the worldwide delivery of courses: its capacity to separate information from the context in which it has arisen. The article discusses the impact that this can have on meaning and ways in which this impact may be countered in Web-delivered courses