Why Distance Learning?

About Why Distance Learning?

Why Distance Learning? is a podcast about the decisions, design choices, and assumptions that determine whether live virtual learning becomes shallow and transactional—or meaningful, relational, and effective at scale. The show is designed for education leaders, instructional designers, and system-level practitioners responsible for adopting, scaling, and sustaining virtual, hybrid, and online learning models. Each episode examines the structural conditions under which distance learning actually works—and the predictable reasons it fails when it doesn’t. Through conversations with researchers, experienced practitioners, and field-shaping leaders, Why Distance Learning? translates research, field evidence, and lived experience into decision-relevant insight. Episodes surface real tradeoffs, near-failures, and hard-won lessons, equipping listeners with clear framing and language they can use to explain, defend, or redesign distance learning models in real organizational contexts. Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning, and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, the podcast challenges outdated narratives about distance learning and explores what becomes possible when live virtual education is designed intentionally, human-centered, and grounded in evidence.

Publisher

Seth Fleischauer, Allyson Mitchell, and Tami Moehring

Category

education · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Mar 2023

Latest episode

26 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

97 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Oct 2026

   #92 Training Students to Teach Live Virtual Museum Programs with Central Michigan's Rebecca Petrone & Kayli Adams

   In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth and Allyson speak with Rebecca Petrone, the educator/technologist at Central Michigan University's Museum of Cultural and Natural History, and Kayli Adams, a graduate assistant at the museum. They talk about how a museum with a full-time staff of three trains undergraduates to design and deliver live virtual programs for real classrooms, and what students and audiences get out of letting novices present. Together, Seth, Allyson, Rebecca, and Kayli explore how the museum moved its distance learning from a green screen and webcam to a campus lightboard studio, how Rebecca builds programs around the objects in the collection, and how she uses the chat, open-ended questions, and a co-designed Valentine to make up for what students can't touch through a screen. Rebecca describes her shadow-then-present training model and her plan for a free virtual series that audiences book knowing the presenter is a student. Kayli talks about leading her first program before she felt ready and about the coloring pages she now keeps on hand for shy kids. The episode closes with Kayli, who was homeschooled, remembering what a thirty-minute virtual session meant to a kid who couldn't go on field trips, and Rebecca on how a single comment in the chat can make an older learner feel like they made a friend. Key topics Training undergraduates to deliver live virtual museum programs Shadow, practice, present: a scaffolded model for new presenters Object-based learning when the audience can't touch the objects Using chat, open-ended questions, and gamification to drive engagement Student-built exhibits and programs, including the international New Year Traditions program Building leadership and confidence through real stakes Distance learning as connection for rural, homeschooled, and lifelong learners Links & Resources CMU Museum of Cultural & Natural History — programs on CILC https://www.cilc.org/ContentProvider/ViewContentProvider.aspx?id=733 (https://www.cilc.org/ContentProvider/ViewContentProvider.aspx?id=733) CMU Museum of Cultural & Natural History https://cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/museum-cultural-natural-history (https://cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/museum-cultural-natural-history) "From CMU to the World: Lightboard Studio Helps Deliver Interactive Museum Studies Training" — CMU Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support blog (2025). https://blogs.cmich.edu/cis/?p=953 (https://blogs.cmich.edu/cis/?p=953) CMU Lightboard Studio reservations — Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support. [LINK — confirm cis.cmich.edu/lightboard] "Museum earns third Pinnacle Award for virtual programs" — CMU News, by Rebecca Petrone. https://www.cmich.edu/news/details/museum-earns-third-pinnacle-award-for-virtual-programs (https://www.cmich.edu/news/details/museum-earns-third-pinnacle-award-for-virtual-programs) Guest Bio: Rebecca Petrone Rebecca Petrone is the Museum Educator/Technologist at Central Michigan University's Museum of Cultural and Natural History, where she develops and delivers the museum's in-person and live virtual programs and teaches museum studies courses on public programming and museum work. She previously managed science labs at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, leading school groups both virtually and in person, and has also worked at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the National Museum of Ireland, and as an associate teacher in a Chicago elementary school. She holds a BA in History from Central Michigan University and an MA in World Heritage Management and Conservation from University College Dublin. Guest Bio: Kayli Adams Kayli Adams is a graduate assistant at the CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History, where she works mainly in collections and presents the museum's virtual programs. She started at the museum as a student assistant in education and led its Curious Curators summer program in her first year there. She previously worked in early childhood care. About the Hosts Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts (https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts) Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org (https://cilc.org)

2. 

   12 Oct 2026

   #91 Agentagogy: What Learning With AI Actually Requires - with Mark Deschaine

   In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth, Allyson, and Tami conclude their conversation with Dr. Mark Deschaine — Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi — with a look at the practical frameworks for building and sustaining institutional knowledge in a period of rapid change. Deschaine traces the Five Cs of digital curation from its origins as a college-level literacy tool to its current life as an organizational knowledge management system, and closes by announcing agentagogy — a forthcoming framework for learning with agentic AI, grounded in the specific role of productive struggle. Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Mark explore the Five Cs — collect, categorize, critique, conceptualize, circulate — and how they've evolved from individual educator practice into a knowledge management container layered above continuous improvement cycles, allowing organizations to hold onto what they know across staff turnover and structural change. Mark revisits No Child Left Behind's standardization mandate as a case study in the gap between quantitative accountability and qualitative story-telling, and asks whether 30 million individualized stories can ever aggregate into policy — or whether the market is already answering that question by moving outside the system. He drops news that Andreessen Horowitz is building its own AI-driven university, framing it as the clearest signal yet that innovators have stopped waiting for traditional structures to catch up. The conversation closes with two connected ideas: that distance learning, from correspondence courses to TikTok, has always existed outside the formal system — and that agentagogy, the framework Mark is currently developing, asks what happens to learning when the agent is no longer the learner but the AI. His answer is specific: productive struggle is the mechanism learning runs on, and an AI that removes all friction may be training us to stop developing the capacity to do the hard part ourselves. Key topics: Five Cs of digital curation as organizational knowledge management Continuous improvement and the Process Improvement Guidelines framework No Child Left Behind and the limits of quantitative accountability Andreessen Horowitz building an AI-driven university Distance learning as always-existing informal practice (TikTok, YouTube, correspondence courses) Social learning, Zone of Proximal Development, and the role of productive struggle Agentagogy: a framework for learning with agentic AI ADIL 34th Annual Conference Links & Resources: "The Five Cs of Digital Curation: Supporting Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning" — Deschaine & Sharma, InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281641256 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281641256) "Digital Curation: A Framework to Enhance Adolescent and Adult Literacy Initiatives" — Deschaine & Sharma, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2016. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.523 (https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.523) ADIL — Association for Distance Education and Independent Learning (34th Annual Conference, online, free for students): https://adeil.org/adeil-34th-annual-conference/ (https://adeil.org/adeil-34th-annual-conference/) Journal of Contemporary Research in Education (JCRE): https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jcre/ (https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jcre/) Guest Bio: Mark E. Deschaine, PhD Mark Deschaine is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he prepares MA, EdS, EdD, and PhD candidates for school and district leadership roles and serves as editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education. His research focuses on online learning policy, special education in virtual school settings, and differentiated instruction — grounded in a practitioner career spanning building-level principal, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. He is a Research Fellow at Michigan Virtual and a Leadership Team Member for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning. About the Hosts: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts (https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts) Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org (https://cilc.org)

3. 

   28 Sept 2026

   #90 What Happens to Schools When Families Stop Showing Up with Dr. Mark Deschaine

   In this episode of Why Distance Learning?, Seth, Allyson, and Tami continue their conversation with Dr. Mark Deschaine — Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi and editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education — about what it actually means to individualize, differentiate, personalize, and build presence in online learning environments, and why treating those four things as synonyms has real consequences for practice. Deschaine frames the discussion through decades of research in special education policy, online learning design, and teacher preparation. Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Mark explore the four distinct instructional frames — individualization, differentiation, personalization, and presence — unpacking each one's theoretical basis and what it requires from a teacher or program designer. Mark introduces a four-quadrant framework for educational decision-making — theoretical, legal, empirical, and practical — that grounds those choices in something more durable than intuition. Seth synthesizes the two frameworks into a single arc: differentiation creates the conditions, individualization targets the path, personalization restores the learner's agency, and presence is the measure of whether it worked. The conversation then turns structural: as tens of thousands of students leave traditional systems for homeschooling and micro schools, school districts lose not just enrollment revenue but their roles as the primary economic engines of rural communities. Mark traces how state variation in school choice policy, educational savings accounts, and the decentralization of federal funding are reshaping where families live — and what kinds of learning infrastructure those communities can sustain. The episode ends on a question Mark leaves deliberately open: does a community have the resilience to absorb this level of change? Key topics: Individualization, differentiation, personalization, and presence as four distinct instructional frames Four-quadrant decision-making: theoretical, legal, empirical, and practical How special education's IEP model illuminates what individualized learning actually requires Homeschooling growth and its impact on traditional school enrollment and funding School districts as community economic engines — and what happens when they shrink State variation in school choice, educational savings accounts, and online learning access Geographic equity gaps in who can access distance learning Links & Resources: "Framing Instructional Strategies as a Concept in K-12 Digital Learning" — Deschaine, Rice & Rose, ResearchGate, March 2026. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/402734231 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/402734231) "Providing Special Education Services in Fully Online Statewide Virtual Schools: A Policy Scan" — Deschaine et al., 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340436252 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340436252) National Standards for Quality Online Learning (NSQOL): https://nsqol.org/ (https://nsqol.org/) Michigan Virtual: michiganvirtual.org (https://michiganvirtual.org) The Reflective Practitioner — Donald Schön: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/donald-a-schon/the-reflective-practitioner/9780786725366/?lens=basic-books (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/donald-a-schon/the-reflective-practitioner/9780786725366/?lens=basic-books) Guest Bio: Mark E. Deschaine, PhD Mark Deschaine is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he prepares MA, EdS, EdD, and PhD candidates for school and district leadership roles and serves as editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education. His research focuses on online learning policy, special education in virtual school settings, and differentiated instruction — grounded in a practitioner career spanning building-level principal, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. He is a Research Fellow at Michigan Virtual and a Leadership Team Member for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning. About the Hosts: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts (https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts) Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org (https://cilc.org)

Who has been a guest on Why Distance Learning?

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Amanda Bell
• Alan Tang
• Desiré Mosser
• Dr Lori Wiggins

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

16 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

81

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

71

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Guest appearances

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