All about Distance Learning

Simply put, distance learning is the delivery of education in which the instructor and students are not in the same classroom. It builds on the idea that students are learning all the time you don't have to be sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor deliver a lecture about a particular topic to learn about that topic. As with traditional higher education, students can take distance learning courses for self-improvement, certification, or to earn a degree. While online distance learning programs are, of course, a modern phenomenon, distance learning has a much longer history. Today's distance learning programs have their roots in the correspondence courses of the late 1800s in the United States. In Europe, Africa, and Asia, distance learning dates back even further. Some of the earliest U.S. correspondence programs were offered from land-grant institutions which were trying to reach an agricultural population that couldn't afford to leave their work behind to attend college on a campus. They used postal systems to send course materials to students in rural communities. The students would complete and return assignments through the mail. While this concept of correspondence courses has continued to the present, distance learning has grown and taken on new and combined forms as technological advances were made.

In the 1920s, some schools began enhancing and expanding upon their correspondence courses with the use of radio. They would broadcast lectures over the radio to supplement the written course materials that they would still distribute using mail. As America moved from radio to television in the 1950s, so did distance learning broadcasting. Schools started broadcasting the lectures on closed circuit and public television while continuing to use mailbased correspondence for texts and assignments. As times and technology continued to change, they moved to broadcasting on dedicated cable channels and through the use of audio- and video-tapes. From the 1960s until the 1990s, many distance learning programs used combinations of delivery methods, primarily television-based delivery for the lecture portion of a course and written materials transmitted through the postal service.

In the 1980s, as computers gained popularity, several colleges and universities began experimenting with virtual delivery of courses. They tried different ways to use the computer in distance learning. But it wasn't until the 1990s, when the Internet gained acceptance into peoples' homes, that the idea really caught on. Online distance learning took off as more and more schools began tailoring their programs to use computers and the Internet.

The first program to offer courses solely through distance learning-the University of the State of New York's External Degree Program-was founded in 1971. The program was quite popular and has grown over the years. Granted a charter by the New York State Board of Regents in 1998, it's now a private institution known as Regents College. Another modern innovator in distance learning was Nova University, which lead the way in computer based distance learning. Building on a UNIX based network, Nova began offering distance learning courses that used computers as a delivery method over 15 years ago.

Distance Learning Students

Distance learning students are people from all walks of life who want to further their educations but cannot commit to an on-campus program for one reason or another.

The average distance learning student is over 25 years of age, employed, and has some previous college experience. Over half of the distance learning students are female. And distance learners have proven to be highly motivated and disciplined in their studies.