Moore (1993) identified three types of interactions that occur in distance education: those between students and subject content, those between students and academics, and those between the students themselves. Until relatively recently, opportunities for interaction between students in distance education programs were limited. The design of such programs therefore tended to follow the instructional model (Okada, 2005) and focus heavily on facilitating student interaction with the subject content. During the past 15 years, the rapid spread of the .
