Concepts: Problems in defining the field of distance education

In their article “Mapping the Boundaries of Distance Education: Problems in Defining the Field, ‘ ‘ in the first issue of The American Journal of Distance Education, Garrison and Shale criticized Desmond Keegan's The Foundations of Distance Education (1986) as “too narrow a view of distance education.” In the conclusion of their article, they wrote: “We have argued that Keegan's definition is too restrictive in its view that distance education is an industralised form of learning. Moreover, his definition leads to a characterisation of distance education that is unnecessarily bounded by past practice and results in a tautological descriptive definition.” Desmond Keegan was invited to respond to Garrison and Shale.