Re:Distance Learning (Score 1)

At the Open University in the UK (which teaches via distance learning), the vast majority of our courses now use asynchronous conferencing. We have something like 120,000 students using this technology. Many courses find it enormously effective. The actual conferencing technology (FirstClass) is not especially sophisticated, but works really well for our needs.

To me the asynchronous aspect (i.e. people not on the conferences at the same time) adds quite a bit for distance learning students. It fits nicely with the variable study patterns and time availability that people studying part time have, and makes quite a difference over classroom discussions or IRC. And maybe we just have nice students, but I don't often see many flame wars. :-)

On the course I teach, we've also had a lot of success with embedding interactive elements into the course website. Our metaphor for this is that they're all reading from the same textbook and can scribble things in the margin for others to read. Except that 500 of them can all have the same book out of the library at once...