DISTANCE EDUCATION AND NEW INFORMATION TE CHNOLOGIES - RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

It is expected of new information technologies that they decisively in fluence educational measures. This goes above all for distance educati on in which the storage and transmission of teaching material will cha nge fundamentally. The authors present forms of new information techno logies (e-mail, CD-ROM, WWW etc.) which may be used in distance educat ion and which lead to ''global classrooms''. These forms are contraste d with conventional distance education and compared with regard to the social dimension and the dimensions of sensorial modality and of prod uctivity. Theoretical pedagogical concepts that are given special atte ntion in information-technology-based distance education are analyzed with regard to open, situated, and social learning; and neccessary ped agogical framework conditions such as relevant project characteristics , specific student and teacher abilities, as well as learning effects are examined on the basis of empirical evidence. Finally, global class rooms are discussed from the educational-political point of view.