Just look at this article, by Peter B. Williams, Scott L. Howell, R. Dwight Laws and Emily Metheny, appears in the Winter 2006 edition of The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration:
Distance learning administrators are always looking for ways to balance increasing demands on instructor time, rising expectations from students and faculty for support services, mounting competition, and escalating costs with quality instruction and interaction. Increasingly, programs are responding to these competing interests by appending ancillary resources to course materials and textbooks and by using computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools, e.g., e-mail, online bulletin and discussion boards, blogs, interactive television, and computer conferencing.
Source: Via Distance-Educator.com