Distance education is essential to improve access to education, particularly for certain categories of people who are unable to travel to a train- ing center, such as long-term hospital patients, prison inmates, etc. In addition, distance education has been given a new impetus by the Covid-19 pandemic, al- lowing many universities and training centers to maintain pedagogical continui- ty. Today, distance education can rely on more and more sophisticated tools and technologies. However, one may wonder if this is enough to cover all the di- mensions of learning. We will argue that non-verbal communication is neces- sary to promote learning and thus guarantee the quality of teaching and the commitment of the learners. To this end, we believe it is appropriate to start a reflection on this subject and to try to provide an answer to the following re- search question: how can distance education compensate for the lack of the physical and human dimension of communication? The aim of this paper is to present the first results of our reflections. Based on work in the fields of educa- tional science, ergonomics and human-machine interaction, we propose a mod- el-driven approach that is independent of any technological platform. This ap- proach can be instantiated and adapted to different learning situations.