Due to the growth of the Internet. formal higher education may occur in a home, an office, or anywhere a person wanting to acquire new knowledge may be located. However, the advanced technology may be causing educators and distance learners to miss an important channel of communication, which students in a traditional classroom setting experience: face-to-face interaction. The purpose of this research was to identify the forms of communication being utilized by asynchronous distance learning students and their instructors and consider whether these forms of interaction adequately address their communication needs. In a study conducted with 500 online students and 313 instructors within Indiana's higher education institutions' distance learning programs, respondents shared details about the types of mediated communication interactions they experienced, for instance, telephone calls, e-mails, or discussion boards, along with the amount and frequency of the interactions. Additionally, in an effort to identify a student's motivation (specifically, locus of control that may play a role in the student's enrolling in online distance learning), a modified version of Rotter's Locus of Control scale was utilized, and responses were measured using a Likert-type scale. On the basis of their responses, it appears that online students and their instructors favor a group discussion board / web blogging. or e-mail as the choice methods of communication, whereas both groups rated face-to-face meetings as 'not important' to their success in the online course(s). In addition, most students were found to have an internal locus of control, which may indicate they are better suited for the rigors of online learning.