Proximity learning at its best is filled with the excitement of discovery and the enthusiasm of exchanged viewpoints. It assumes that learning is a highly social process in which individual talents and distributive cognition are enhanced by guided access to the richness of both print and online information resources.

Proximity learning includes the active exploration of information resources guided by someone with experience. This resource guide is often a faculty member, but in these settings, where the authority of the classroom is often shifted away from the instructor, the content specialist may also be a librarian, a technologist, or even a student with experience relevant to the topic. Proximity learning takes place often in small classes, lab sessions and seminars, or in gatherings of learners outside of class. Imagine a classroom in which twenty undergraduates, focused on a collaborative class project, use networked computers to search for pertinent information, guided by their instructor, while intensely involved in overlapping conversations that seek to evaluate and understand new concepts. Imagine the contagious motivation of the students as their faculty partner provides a scholar's perspective for their race to find meaning.

Some of us have turned to technology to communicate with our students, to extend the intellectual exchanges beyond the classroom, to replace lectures with student-created, collaborative projects. We are enthusiastic about the promises of learning technologies, and continue to experiment with new methods in our teaching in hopes that we can enhance our students' learning. Many of us have frequent first-hand experience with such sessions that emphasize active, constructivist approaches to learning, that alter the "balance of power" in the classroom, and that genuinely transform our students' learning.

For some of our colleagues, however, the risks of reliance on technology appear to outweigh the gains, and they gladly emphasize close, interpersonal teaching experiences with little if any involvement of technology.

"There is no electronic interface that duplicates the mentoring process. The strength of a college or university lies in its face-to-face mentoring process" (Bothun, 1999 in CAUSE/EFFECT 21(2)). In support of selective uses of online learning, Bothun continues to note that "…the physical lecture for large, information-oriented survey courses may add no value to the student." Both distance and proximity learning have their places.

No single approach to learning is universally applicable. We can be thankful that the needs of learners, interests of faculties and missions of institutions of higher education in the United States are diverse and dynamic. For many of these institutions, and for corporations as well, new information technologies offer the opportunity to reach new learners with new products. These emerging uses of network technology to support distance learning are without question important. For many other institutions, new information technologies offer the opportunity to reach traditional learners with improved classroom experiences. Face-to-face experiences can be enhanced, even transformed, by information technologies that are carefully selected to meet specific pedagogical goals. It is to this relatively small sector of the higher education community, populated by residential colleges and universities, that we address the issue of proximity learning.