Abstract  This Paper presents a series of empirical studies involving approx850 students to show how flexibility in course design should be informed by the student's culture and native language (L1), gender, and age, and explains how to decide on the most appropriate learning technology in course design by applying the Theory of Transactional Distance. Curves are presented to show how academic English reading rates online and offline are affected by the L1, gender, and age (over a wide age range 1881 years old). To prevent inequitable culturallydistinct overload, course design should be modified using hypertext. Choice of media——in particular synchronous versus asynchronous media——is decided according to the Theory of Transactional Distance. This theory is here extended from tutortoonestudent to multiple students in a group, and the masculinity can be modified. Briefly, at initial maximal distance (D-S-) early on, the community is fostered with synchronous media for cooperative group learning, followed by (D-S+) collaborative learning using one of two frameworks presented to ensure constructivism in asynchronous mode, then (D-S+) collaborative for Guided Didactic Conversation in asynchronous mode, and finally (D+ S-) cooperatively in synchronous mode for reflective sharing of course learning experiences. At each transactional distance, or in each mode, hypertext is purposively designed to complement the cooperative or collaborative style to provide selfaccess support (additional analysis and reasoning to cooperative, and examples to collaborative) to provide equitable content and quality of learning across wide cultural and L1 ranges, to remove gender bias, and to accommodate variations due to student age. Thus, to promote student autonomy and lifelong learning.

 Key word  coures design; multimedia; the theory of transactional distance; hypertest

【CLC nurnbers】G423.06 【Document code】A

【Article ID】1007-2179(2004)06-0065-05