TxDLA is the leading Texas membership association for distance learning professionals. Our members represent public and private education institutions at all levels as well as corporate training professionals and distance learning equipment and content providers. All of our members have a strong interest in keeping abreast of the ideas, technologies, and content that will help them develop and maintain leading-edge distance learning programs and products.

The impetus for forming the Association, as our late Founding President, Mr. Don Foshee of Innovative Interactions, Inc. observed, was to ".provide an accessible clearinghouse of useful information that is non-biased, timely, and transcends the special interests that provide only fragmented pieces of the big picture."

Key leaders in Texas from primary and secondary public schools, community colleges, higher education institutions, state government, major corporations, the military, and the telecommunications industry worked towards formation of the TxDLA, which was established in 1996 as a not-for-profit professional association affiliated with the U.S. Distance Learning Association (USDLA).

TxDLA members choose to represent their organization as an association of "distance learning" professionals in order to invite broad participation in the networking and exchange of information demanded by our mission. We use the broad term "distance learning" to encompass all of the persons and tools employed today in bringing about effective distance learning. Distance learning is recognized as taking place whenever a learner is either distant in space or asynchronous in time from the bulk of their learning resources.

Our broad definition of distance learning results in an inclusive Association. We address issues of interest to the entire distance learning community, which includes the learners themselves as well as the administrators, educators, instructors, corporate trainers, content, equipment, software producers/publishers/providers, telecommunications providers, and others involved in the typical distance learning situation.