Designing Interaction Equivalency in Distance Education

Abstract: The fundamental advancement of information technology has given rise to distance education industry hence it has helped to the popularity of distance education among people. However, for employing innovative and advanced tools universities need financial resources. Reaching to these resources is not easy and accessible. Interaction equivalency theorem can be a good solution for overcoming the financial problems but designers are reluctant to utilize it because they think that education quality will decrease due to lack of teacher interaction. This study demonstrated that students’ perception toward interaction equivalency is positive as long as they have high level of interdependency with other students. Without this level of, students are not motivated in order to continue their courses. This study by providing techno-pedagogical design and IS design theory for support of IE helps e-learning practitioners who want to design an acceptable distance educational system with limited financial resources.