MY TWO CENTS

I found the draft paper on "Designing and Studying Learning Experiences That Use Multiple Interactive Media To Bridge Distance and Time" to be a really insightful look at what students that are currently enrolled in classes that seek to link distance and time go through. I must say from a personal aspect, that my preference would be f2f, but I have found that posting in a threaded discussion environment allows me to gather my thoughts and to develop meaningful input.
What I found through the reading of this article is that my "procrastination" is both good and bad. The good is that it allows me time to read what other students have written, as many students in study did, and it aids in focusing my reading of the article to be able to pull out the things that are significant to our class. The down side of that is that I may express a thought that has already been written and it is more or less repeating what someone else is already wrote.
In an attempt to try and keep my comments brief, as from my own experience and in reading the article, many students will simply by pass the comments if they are too long, I have to admit, this is often the case for me. I would agree with the overall conclusion of the article that f2f does leave students feeling deprived, while multimedia is not the sole answer either. With the varied learners and learning styles that are just as diverse as the world we live in, a combination of all those things that are good, sort of an eclectic design of delivery, is certainly the way the good. I am of the thought that this is the best way to go about teaching and it is the way that students/learners/teachers alike will all benefit from what is to be learned/taught.