Christopher Sessums does some nice reflecting on the social software/web2 paradigm in this post.
He only touches on transactional distance though.

“A transaction is a mutual exchange between parties. Moore recognized that in a course high in structure, such as a pure lecture course, there is generally little dialog between educator and learner and transactional distance is maximized. Conversely, as dialog is increased, the structure decreases, thereby minimizing the transactional distance between educator and learner.”
While the theory is used in distance education I wonder to what extent it can also be applied to web 2, particularly in the edublogger domain. It might be worth exploring one’s experience of geographical distance as a starting point. I’ve often shared a personal story in support of distributed learning, the one about interacting more with my mother since email. For the past 28 years we’ve lived no less than 3,000 miles apart and in many ways I’ve never felt closer to her as a result of email. A colleague shared a similar story about being separated from her partner for over a year.

There’s a lot to chew on. There’s personality type/learner preferences. I think maturity and psychological development play a role too in that until fairly recently working adults were the primary consumers of distance education (I like the term distributed learning). However, Pam Tate at CAEL points out the profile of an adult, for educational purposes is rapidly changing.

And then there’s the comparison to our experience of transactional distance in familiar educational settings. How does that experience of TD impact learning in a 500 seat classroom? For some learners I can imagine it’s perfectly acceptable and preferred. I’d guess though that they’d be above average students, more field independent, and intrinsically motivated.
Add to that scenario, virtual office hours and a thriving online exchange of discussions and group work. In the former, the lecturer is actually available more often because the technology makes that more feasible and cost effective. In the latter, the technology enables pedagogy that is impractical in a face to face setting. The other student, the one who’s more field dependent, now has a place to land.