Distance Education

Distance learning is not a modern phenomenon. In fact, it dates back to 1728, when Caleb Phillips, a teacher in Boston, Massachusetts, offered lessons to students through weekly lessons sent by mail. In the early 1840s, long before the advent of the Internet, Isaac Pitman, a British educator, also taught shorthand through correspondence courses. Distance learning and education have a long history, but their popularity multiplied by a hundred as more advanced technology and media were available at the end of the 20th century.

Distance Education was first established in the 1930s, with more than 25 state boards of education, 200 school systems, and several colleges and universities offering educational programs broadcast on public radio. However, it was not until the advent of the Internet in the early 2000s that the availability and popularity of distance learning programs soared. Computers and the Internet made distance learning faster, easier and much more convenient. Today, web-based online education programs are available in most states of the United States. Nowadays, enrollment in distance education programs at all educational levels is commonplace. Private, public, nonprofit and for-profit secondary, post-secondary and higher education institutions, including high schools, colleges and universities, now offer distance education programs in almost every field of study imaginable. From basic literacy to doctoral programs, distance education courses are available at all levels of instruction.

The Internet

While distance education programs are offered through a wide variety of media, online education, through the Internet, is now the norm. In 1996, Jones International University was the first institution of higher education to launch a fully accredited online degree program. In the following years, most of the important colleges and universities quickly followed their example. Renowned higher education institutions, such as Harvard University and Stanford, now offer distance learning programs for their students online. According to a survey conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group, in 2016 enrollment in distance education increased for the fourteenth consecutive year. 31.6% of all students took at least one distance course.

Although for-profit universities have been the fastest to adopt and exploit Internet technology to offer online degrees to the masses, most public universities now also offer their academic programs completely online. Common fields of study online include, among others, business programs, psychology, criminal justice, health sciences, computer science, design and liberal arts.

Distance Education has been rapidly adopted as the method of choice of training and education among busy professionals who work. Online distance learning programs offer the most affordable and convenient means to obtain a degree, improve skills and obtain a higher education.

Online learning is misunderstood. Here’s how.

One in three college students takes at least one online class. But the general environment is still poorly understood by the general public, and even within online education.

So, what is it that professionals working in the trenches want their colleagues to know about online education? You would be surprised. It certainly was.

I asked that question during a talk I gave last week during the Minnesota E-Learning Summit on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota (where, by the way, the cream of the campus makes delicious chocolate ice cream).

From, instructional designer at the University of St. Thomas, I heard a reminder that classes are not just a one-way "passive transfer of information". Even online, he noted, "students can have a learning community." I would like to expect that to be true in all cases, but it is certainly right that such connections are possible and ideal.

Christine Mueller, dean associate senior executive for academic programs at the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota, argued that online classes are often designed with more care than their brick and mortar counterparts. "Our faculty is actually learning about how you build the courses and the curriculum," he said. "Honestly, most of the teachers, and I am one of them, I never learned that, we learned our discipline, but we did not learn to teach."

That feeling has existed for a while. But it made me wonder: When will that not be so true? I keep hearing that graduate programs are taking teaching more seriously as part of their teacher training. It’s enough? And does that training equip the new teachers with the skills they will need to teach online education?

My curiosity was also stimulated by a concept presented by Jane Sims, director of academic technology at St. Scholastica College. The online classes, he said, can bring together students from more diverse backgrounds, and give them more opportunities to connect with each other, than many traditional classes.

She worked on a follow-up email exchange. " online education and traditional classrooms are often segregated" by the age and circumstances of students’ lives, he wrote, and they are limited by the clock. "There is not enough time for everyone to speak in a scheduled session, and often extroverts are heard instead of introverts or people of other cultures or physical abilities."

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