What is Distance Education?
The beginnings of distance education dates back all the way from the year 1728. It sprung from a newspaper advertisement, in which Caleb Phillips, teacher of the new method of shorthand was looking for students to be sent weekly school lessons. Since then, more educators added to the demand of learning via correspondence. By the 19th century, commercial correspondence colleges became wide-spread all through out the different nations because of the development of the postal service. Distance education, or distance learning, is a field of education that focuses on the strategies of instruction, learning strategies, technology, and instructional systems design that aim to deliver education to students who are not physically “on site”. Rather than attending courses in person, teachers and students may communicate at times of their own choosing by exchanging printed or electronic media, or through technology that allows them to communicate in real time and through other online ways. Distance education courses that require a physical on-site presence for any reason including the taking of examinations is considered to be a hybrid or blended course of study.
There are many private and public, non-profit and for-profit institutions offering courses and degree programs through distance education. Levels of accreditation vary; some institutions offering distance education in the United States have received little outside oversight, and some may be fraudulent diploma mills. In many other jurisdictions, an institution may not use the term “University” without accreditation and authorization, normally by the national government. Online education is rapidly increasing among mainstream universities in the United States, where online doctoral programs have even developed at prestigious research institutions.
Tags: colleges and universities, distance learning, online education
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