What is Distance Learning?
Distance learning is any learning where the teacher and learner are separated by space or time.
It can use any medium: mail, radio, television, printed material, or the internet.
Distance learning is a broad term for any learning where teacher and student are apart in distance or time.
It can use mail, radio, television, printed materials, or the internet, and it covers a wide family of methods developed over more than a century.
Distance learning is defined by one thing: the teacher and the learner are not in the same place at the same time. The medium can be almost anything. What makes it distance learning is the separation, not the tool.
Separated by Space or Time
In distance learning, the learner studies away from a shared classroom. The teacher may be in another city or country, and the lesson may be studied days after it was prepared.
This is the core idea. A learner who reads a printed lesson at home, weeks after the teacher wrote it, is doing distance learning. So is a learner who joins a live class from another country. Both are apart from the teacher in space, time, or both.
The teacher and learner are apart in space or time.
They do not share one classroom at one moment.
The medium does not matter. Mail, radio, television, or the internet can all carry distance learning.
The Mediums It Uses
Distance learning has used many mediums as technology has changed:
- Printed material and lessons sent by mail
- Educational radio broadcasts
- Educational television
- Online platforms and video classes over the internet
The internet is only the newest medium. Mail, radio, and television carried distance learning for decades before it, and some of them still do where the internet is weak.
Forms of Distance Learning
Distance learning takes a few common forms:
- Correspondence courses, where printed lessons and assignments travel by mail between learner and teacher
- Broadcast learning, where lessons reach learners through radio or television
- Online distance learning, where the lesson is delivered over the internet through video classes and learning platforms
A correspondence course is the oldest form. A learner receives printed lessons by mail, completes the work, and sends assignments back by post, without ever meeting the teacher in person.
Correspondence courses, broadcast learning, and online distance learning.
- Correspondence: lessons by mail
- Broadcast: radio or television
- Online: video classes over the internet
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