More and more online teaching takes place. Sometimes, a lecturer gives a talk using Skype or Google Hangout in a situation where the speaker and the audience are actually on different continents. Medicinal meetings between physician and patient and legal meetings between client and lawyer might take place over the internet or use other methods of seeing and hearing each other at a distance. The general subject of distance education is about teaching students without being physically close to them.
To some, a good teacher or an impressive lawyer may have a sort of charm or presence that is supposedly not easy to feel with using distance methods. Yet, literate folks often have the experience of reading a text written in the last century or a poem from years back and being more affected by the language and the ideas than by the last time they attended a class with a living teacher. Once Professor X in my department gave a lesson to a large class and collected written notes and questions from those present. One of the questions was "How long has Professor X been dead?" Maybe you have seen the interrogation of Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" movie or the courtroom scenes in the movie "Inherit the Wind" and been very moved by actors who were physically long dead.
Both human arts such as photography and acting and human sensitivity that students possess are wide, and deep, and rich. Right today, you might read Ecclesiastes in the King James bible or Socrates' Apology and be so moved and so affected that you carry the effect in you for the remaining years of your life. In discussions of "live" (a.k.a. 'face to face') vs. distance methods, one component that is sometimes missed but can matter is the presence of other listeners or students. They don't always matter but their expressions of awe or stupefaction or confusion or distaste can definitely affect the final result of the meeting or lesson.
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