The rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) since the early 2020s has been argued to be on the verge of creating far reaching and systemic impacts on many sectors of human activity. This includes education, where artificial intelligence has been equally touted as both radical innovator and serious threat. In distance learning, the potential impact of artificial intelligence has been characterised as far reaching (Amin et al. 2025) with the development of adaptive and personalised learning, tutorial systems, and real-time feedback. Indeed, for some artificial intelligence is a technology which can transform distance learning for the better (Mijwil et al. 2023). But many of these potential changes are still embryonic and there may be alternative trajectories in which experts hope the sector will develop.

In this study we completed a Delphi study with 10 experts in distance learning to research the challenges they felt the distance learning sector faces in relation to Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We followed a Delphi methodology firstly asking respondents to answer the research questions in an online qualitative questionnaire. From the responses several Likert Scale statements were constructed and an agreement scale used. Once the respondents had completed this questionnaire we calculated median and interquartile values for each statement. Each respondent was then sent the questionnaire a second time; for each statement they were asked to compare their first response against the median and interquartile range and decide whether or not they would like to change their original opinion and to what. Respondents were also asked to add any qualitative reflections based on the statistics they had seen.

In this presentation we offer initial results form the study focusing on the views of the distance learning experts about what they believe the impact and advantages/disadvantages of artificial intelligence will be on their practice.