The communication conducted in e-education systems directly affects the educational results and the participants’ satisfaction. Some characteristics of communication in online education make it successful in comparison to traditional instruction, while others cause difficulties both for the instructor and for the participants.

Let us first look at the characteristics of face-to-face communication during the traditional instruction . Such communication is personal or interpersonal, two-way, real-time of synchronous, multi-channel (at the same time spoken verbal channel is open, as are numerous non-verbal channels of communication, such as the timbre, facial expression etc.), it is relatively fast and intensive (i.e. in a short period of time a lot of verbal and non-verbal messages are exchanged), the use of feedback is intensive, it is usually not technically mediated and it is especially adaptable, since it is based on immediate and natural behaviour in a familiar surrounding to which the participants of communication are used.

The process of communication during online education has significantly different characteristics from classic instruction. First of all, the communication is mostly impersonal (i.e. the participant mostly communicates with the LMS), it is typically asynchronous or has a time delay, it is to a great extent one-way (most of the information comes from the system to the participant), it is in most cases limited to 1 or 2 communication channels (i.e. text and possibly visual illustrations), it is relatively slow and of low intensity (there is not even closely as much information exchange as in face-to-face communication), it only partly uses feedback (mostly the feedback that the system supports, provides or asks for is activated, as well as that which can be transferred through the available communication channels), it is entirely technically-mediated which makes it more complex, it is for the most part poorly adaptable because it is asynchronous and requires the participants to have technical foreknowledge, and it is integrated into the systems of communication available through computer mediation (e-mail, forums etc.).

During the process of communication, different errors and difficulties in receiving the information are possible. The notion of noise in the communication channel is well known. Internet is a medium in which problems related to the communication channel often appear.

Some of the problems in communication in e-education are of technical nature : Internet connection break-up, slow connection to the server on the Internet, incompatibility of the Internet browser on the participants’ computers with the technology used to create the web page, as well as lack of appropriate software for document and multimedia viewing.

Other problems in e-education are related to design of the web interface and the selection of the web content : too tiny letters, bad text and background contrast, inappropriate or discordant colour of text and/or background , distracting visual or textual content (e.g. flashy animated images), bad layout of the key information on a web page, insufficiently emphasized or badly arranged objects which serve as links to other pages, lacking or illogical menus, inappropriate hierarchical structure of the web, too little or too much links between web pages or content, too much text or different content on one web page, much of which draws the users’ attention to the less important information etc.

Designer of online content and messages has to be very careful, as badly designed messages can be seen by everyone who have access to the web page. The following problems in communication are related to the sender (instructor) during online education:
- Insufficient planning of messages is related to selection of inappropriate communication medium ( forum, e-mail, instant messaging ), bad timing of the messages, inadequate length of the message and/or content, message not adapted to the receiver etc.
- Inappropriately expressed message can be the result of a spelling mistake, wrong choice of words or inadequately formulated sentence, visible lack of the expected content, bad organization of the thought stream, incoherent content, using phrases or stereotypes, using slang and other types of imprecise or careless writing or pronunciation of the content..
- Ambiguity of the messages is present when there is a relatively high probability that the said idea will be differently interpreted by the receiver than it was meant by the sender, when a messages is deliberately put together in a way which prevents singe meaning, when the sender and the receiver do not have enough in common in their previous education or affiliation with a certain culture so “common language” is hard to find, as well as when there is no common “standard” related to the use of certain expert or technical terms and expressions.
- Inexplicable assumptions are related to situations in which the sender designs the message having in mind a certain state or activity of the receiver which they did not check or confirm beforehand, and in distance education these can be assumptions about the participants’ foreknowledge, motivation and interests, their computer skills or the use of the LMS interface, their capability to master the planned educational content, the time they have available for study etc.
- Not personal enough and too personal communication are characteristic of sender exchanging only official messages not showing any personality, humour or emotions which the receiver would find interesting because of the social contact or would show them that they were accepted in interaction as a unique person, valued and perceived as positive.

Problems in communication can also be related to the receiver, a fact which both the sender and the receiver should bear in mind. The following difficulties in e-education can be present on the receiver’s part :
- Information overload or bad information management (i.e. not distinguishing between the importance and priority of different received messages, attempting to memorize in stead of writing down the information, inappropriate information storage according to their importance and priority making their later retrieval difficult because of the mass of other data etc.).
- Distrust and doubt which can prevent a person from providing information or from honestly and openly presenting their ideas, opinions, evaluation or suggestions, because they are not sure how the receivers of the message will understand it, and whether what they said or wrote will have unwanted consequences.
- Not paying attention when receiving a message causes neglect of important parts of the message or forgetting its significant content, due to which the communication process is not coherent and time and other resources of both the sender and the receiver are unnecessarily spent, and it also makes it possible that the content of the message be wrongly interpreted.
- Selective perception and memory appear in the case when the receiver focuses their attention only on one part of the message (mostly on the part which strongly attracts their attention or that they strongly want) i.e. when the receiver memorizes only the part of the message which they, for some reason, find important or attractive.

Tips & tricks: Consider the characteristics of the communication process in online education, as well as possible sources of errors in communication. Try to design messages in such a way to avoid as much as possible the possible mistakes or difficulties by properly arranging a message and using appropriate communication media, as well as by taking into account the online participants’ characteristics which could cause problems in their reception of the messages.