Distance Learning/ Education: An overview

Kenneth WilliamsIntroduction
In this paper I will briefly, and somewhat narrowly, present thehistory of distance learning/ education primarily in the UnitedStates of America and then conclude with more or less where it istoday. I say more or less because “today” refers to distance learning/ education on the Internet. The Internet and distance learning/education are changing quickly and will likely have taken a different shape before this paper has been published. We should not thinkof contemporary distance learning/ education in a traditional, linearform. The Internet is “global” and dynamic, and it, along with
distance learning/ education, will not stand still or necessarily movein an unswerving path. Another point to remember is that the use of
the Internet and distance learning/ education is likely to define itself
more than we will define it. We may be able to look at patterns andview trends, but as of yet no one can be sure what exact form either
shall take.

Defining Distance Learning/Education
Initially some fundamental framework needs to be put forward
so we are able to understand what we are referring to when we use
the terms distance learning or distance education. Dan Coldeway(1995) has presented a good design that will assist us in visualizing
one way that education and distance learning/ education in generalῌ 61 ῌmay be organized.
Most education takes place at the same time, same place (STSP). This generally occurs in a classroom and is teacher fronted.
Another form of education could be seen as different time, sameplace (DT-SP). This generally occurs in a media center or computerlaboratory.
The next two, which are more relevant to this paper, address
situations where the instructor and students are in different places.
One is where the instructor is in one place and the student inanother at the same time (ST-DP). This traditionally and still often
occurs via television. The television may be in a classroom or in an
individual’s home, while the instructor is in another place.
The fourth method is learning at different times and in different places (DT-DP). In this design the learner chooses when or whereto access the information presented by the instructor. The rapid
growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web has popularized
this form of distance learning/ education.
A four part view of distance education has been put forward by
Grenville Rumble (1989, pp. 8-21):(1) In any distance education process there must be: a teacher;one or more students; a course of curriculum that the teacher iscapable of teaching and the student is trying to learn; and a contract, implicit or explicit, between the student and the teacher or theinstitution employing the teacher, which acknowledges their respective teaching-learning roles.
(2) Distance education is a method of education in which thelearner is physically separate from the teacher. It may be used on its
own, or in conjunction with other forms of education, including
face-to-face.

ῌ 62 ῌ(3) In distance education learners are physically separated fromthe institution that sponsors the instruction.
(4) The teacher-learning contact requires that the student betaught, assessed, given guidance and, where appropriate, preparedfor examinations that may or may not be conducted by the institution. This must be by two-way communication. Learning may beundertaken either individually or in groups; in either case it isaccomplished in the physical absence of the teacher.
Likely the most straightforward way to view distance learning/ education is where the teacher, instructor or institution is separated physically, or in time from the learner and some form ofcommunication medium is used to connect the two.

A Brief History of Distance Learning/Education

Pre-Distance Learning/Education
Many people and especially those in their twenties or younger
are likely to believe the Internet to be the first use of distancelearning/ education. Far from it. The use of distance learning/ education other then the Internet has existed in various forms for a very
long time. Students have studied and learned information and ideas
in places separated by time and or space from their teachers formuch longer then most people have ever considered.
For example we could say that rock carvings are a form ofdistance learning. They fit the SP-DT format presented above.
Information was left (by often unknown teachers) that gives us (thestudents) knowledge about what the culture, animals, and the topography in a far removed time period were like.
However, the written word was the means that made geo-ῌ 63 ῌgraphical distance learning/ education truly possible and an actual
concept. “The first significant use of the new technology to makecourse materials available to students came with Plato’s publicationof “Socrates’ Dialogues.” Socrates also foresaw saw difficulties withthis sort of learning because words did not always convey thewisdom of the teacher (Klass, 2000, p. 1).
Saying that rock carvings and the printed word (books) are aform of distance learning/ education is a bit of a stretch, from what
we are looking at in this paper, because the one factor that is
missing from both of these forms of communication is an ongoinginteraction between the teacher and the student. In rock carvings
the student has no way of asking the teacher a question. As far as
books go, it is possible for a reader of a book, in recent times, to senda letter to the author of the book, if he or she is still living, and theauthor may respond. However, the chances of the author opening acorrespondence with the letter writer (student) would be relatively
rare. Therefore, for the purposes of this paper we can say that
distance learning/ education began on a wide scale in the 1800’s
with the introduction of correspondence studies.

Correspondence Study
Distance learning/ education was originally known as correspondence study. In this stage of distance learning/ education theteacher and pupil used pen and paper or a typewriter and theycorresponded via the postal service. Correspondence studies grew
rapidly in the United States as the ability to deliver mail improved(Postal Facts, 1996).
This expansion of the postal delivery system allowed students
and instructors to keep in touch on a regular basis relatively

ῌ 64 ῌquickly through some form of written contact. The United States
was not the only country involved with correspondence courses.
Many European countries offered language learning via correspondence studies as early as 1873 (Butler, 2002).
By 1883, the Chautauqua Institute was accredited by New YorkState to confer Sunday school teachers’ degrees through correspondence studies (Chautauqua Institution, 2002). Part of the training
was accomplished on campus and then completed through the mail.
The Colliery Engineer School of Mines was started in 1890.
Later this school developed into the International Correspondence
Schools (ICS) which are still active today and have enrolled over
12,000,000 students (Thomas Education, 2002).
There are many correspondence study programs that could bementioned; however one person that I believe should not be overlooked is Anna Eliot Ticknor, an American, who in 1873 establisheda primarily volunteer correspondence program in Boston to assist
women to receive an education. She is often called “the mother ofAmerican correspondence study.” Later she also founded the Society to Encourage Study at Home (Arcabascio, 2001).
Another program that is of some interest was started by theUnited States Marine Corps. The Marine Corps Institute opened
around 1920 to improve the level of general education and provide
technical training for the enlisted personnel. This program is still in
operation today, offering over 150 courses at both the vocational
training and bachelor’s degree levels (Marine Corps Institute, 2002).

Radio and Television are Incorporated Into Distance Learning/
Education
Radio arrived before television and therefore to the distanceῌ 65 ῌ

learning/ educational scene also. Radio based distance learning/education gained popularity between 1910 and 1920. Radio brought
the instructor’s voice into the student’s home. This added intimacy
and reintroduced into distance learning/ education a portion oftraditional teacher fronted education. From 1918 to 1946 the UnitedStates Government granted over 202 radio broadcasting licenses toeducational institutions. Before the medium ever attracted a large
audience the then new medium of television came to the scene, andby 1940, only one college-level credit course was available via theradio (Nasseh, 1997).
Educational television started as early as 1934 and was used inboth secondary and higher education. After World War II, educational television was discontinued on commercial stations and wascarried through the Public Broadcasting System (Gearhart, 2000).
In general, there were several drawbacks with radio and television. First, the learner had to be available at the time the broadcast
was on. Also, the number of televisions grew slowly, and the commercial side of television heavily outweighed the educational potential. In other words, people viewed radio and television as forms ofentertainment and not education. As videotapes, CD and DVD
ROMs became more available they often were used as substitutes
for broadcast television distance learning/ education. In the late1970s and early 1980s, cable and satellite television came into use
on a limited basis.
What is most interesting about the radio and television era ofdistance learning/ education is the relatively small impact it had(Mayer, 2001, p. 9). One possibility that may be put forward toexplain this is that it appeared before there were means of recording
television programs. The learner had to be available to watch theῌ 66 ῌclass or course. Another, more harsh, suggestion was put forward
by Newton Minnow the former FCC chairman in his 1961 “vastwasteland” speech (Chicago Tribune, 2001).

The Internet and The World Wide Web.
The move to discussing distance learning/ education on theInternet raises a number of problems. First, the Internet is unlike
anything used before it. If we were to ask most people who use theInternet what it is and how it works, we would likely get no answer
or a number of different answers. There are various ways to describe the Internet depending on the observer’s point of view. These
portrayals can be very simplistic, and they can be long, minute, andlargely impossible to understand.
One definition of the Internet is, “A meganetwork of interconnected networks that share a common language” (Simonson,Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2000, p. 178). The simplest way to thinkof the Internet is as a very large number of computers that areconnected to each other. We also need to specify that these computers are all over the world. How these computers communicate witheach other is another topic that is interesting, but beyond the scopeof what this paper is looking at.
However, we do need to look at the ways people are able tocommunicate using the Internet. One way that teachers and students or students and students may communicate is described as“asynchronous.” In general, this indicates something not occurringat the same time. On the Internet this relates to a person sending amessage, but the recipient need not be around to receive it. Electronic mail is one of the most popular forms of distance learning/education used over the Internet. It is not the only one though.

ῌ 67 ῌElectronic Mail and Distance Learning/Education
The use of electronic mail (e-mail) for distance learning/ education is, in some ways, analogous to the correspondence studies of
the 1870s. However, there are also some significant differences.
Obviously the most visible similarity between the two is thatteacher and student interact using a “mail” system. Conventionalcorrespondence studies use the “traditional mail” mode (often referred to these days as “snail mail”) while e-mail uses the Internet.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of e-mail is the speed at which
the information is sent. Electronic mail has the potential of reaching
the recipient in seconds. Also, with e-mail it is just as easy to send amessage to a group of people as it is to one person. This is called amailing list. Responding is also easy because e-mail software has afunction called “reply.” All one needs to do is click on this button
when you wish to reply to the e-mail you have received.
On the flip side of these positive aspects, we have more then a
few negative ones. If the person receiving e-mail doesn’t check theirmail it makes no difference if it arrived in a few seconds. There isvirtually no security with e-mail. Many people have the opportunityof intercepting your e-mail and reading it. If the company providing
the internet conection you are sending an e-mail to goes down, themessage you send may come back or just be lost in “cyberspace.” Ingeneral, people do not like to read long messages on their monitors,
so they may be forced to print out what you send them. Occasionally, the receiver of e-mail is not using the same font as the senderand this causes problems. The Internet is unforgiving if the receiver’s address is incorrect. If there is any mistake in the e-mailaddress you send it will be returned to you.

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The Community College program of Sophia Junior College inHadano has offered writing classes via e-mail, and they haveworked out well, though they are more time consuming then thesame class taught in a classroom. In reality, they are a hybrid ofcorrespondence studies and an e-mail course. The teachers sent out
a work packet via “snail mail” and then the students interacted withher by e-mail.

The World Wide Web and Distance Learning/Education
The introduction of the World Wide Web (WWW) brought“point and click” technology and the virtual classroom to the Internet. The World Wide Web was first envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee
and then actually launched in 1989 (Connoly, 2000). Although it has
been around a relatively short time, the WWW has literally created
a whole new world in distance learning/ education. There are various ways to create a general overview of distance learning/ education in relation to the WWW. Here is one way.

Facilities
1. Programs offered via the WWW that are part of a school,
college or university that has a campus and also offers traditional“face to face” (F2F) education.
2. A program that is completely “online” and offers no “face toface” classes.

Location of the virtual classroom
1. Many schools use various services provided online, likeBlackbord.com to base their virtual classrooms in.
2. Other schools have their virtual classrooms on computersῌ 69 ῌthey own and maintain.

The Beginnings of the Virtual Classroom“I would ask you to remember that what I will say today abouta California Virtual University is only accurate as of today”(Thompson, 1996, p. 1). Although this quotation will soon be ten
years old, in general it still applies to the virtual classroom.
Although colleges and universities have, in some form, beenoffering online classes since the early 1980s, the big jump camewhen thirteen states in the western part of the United States joined
together in 1995 to create a virtual university. The California
Virtual University is part of this group. In this system students canapply for admission, register for courses, purchase books, “attend”
classes and receive grades without ever going to the campus itself.
There is a growing market for education that has no physicalcampus. They are purely cyberspace universities. Several of thewell known ones are The University of Phoenix On Line and Jones
University. These universities often cater to the working adult andare sometimes called “proprietary (for profit) institutions” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2000, p. 177). Jones University
became the first online credited university in 1999 (Jones International University, 2002).
As one would expect, there is some tension between traditional
universities and the all online universities. The traditional universities look down on these so called “for profit institutions” because
they are “different.” Traditional universities point out that someonline universities have no permanent faculty or a limited one atbest. On the other hand, the all online universities believe the “older”
traditional universities have fallen out of step with what students

ῌ 70 ῌ

want and need today. For the point of view of the all online campus
see the video Jones University presents on its site (Jones International University, 2002).
At this time the future of online classes and campuses is unknown. However, for the time being, the trend is that they are going
to continue to grow. All one needs to do is look at the number ofclasses offered online. Also, the controversy that classes and theoffering of degrees has brought to the foreground indicates something is happening.

Conclusion
This paper has not covered a number of forms of distancelearning/ education. For example, audio recordings, facsimiles, andtelephone communications were not discussed, but, like correspondence studies, radio, television, video, and CDs, they are all still used
today.
The present issue is how distance learning/ education and theInternet will interface. Of course, they already have, as it has been
pointed out, but it would be naive to believe the end has been met oris even in sight. The technology is still defining itself, and, as it doesso, distance learning/ education will also.
As far as what the Internet holds for education in the future, I
will end with a quote from Richard E. Mayer: “Although different
technologies underlie film, radio, television and computer-assisted
instruction, they all produced the same cycle. First, they began with
grand promises about how the technology would revolutionizeeducation. Second, there was an initial rush to implement thecutting-edge technology in schools. Third, from the perspective of afew decades later it became clear that the hopes and expectations

ῌ 71 ῌ

were largely unmet” (2001, pp. 9-10).

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