Distance Education

Distance education educators were the first to recognize the potential of online education. The history of the distance education field shows that it readily accepts innovative ways of instruction delivery. While there is some debate as to when the first distant course was offered, either with a 1728 Boston Gazette advertisement for shorthand lessons by mail or a 1833 Swedish newspaper for composition, there is agreement that "Isaac Pittman was the first modern distance educator" (Verduin & Clark, 1991, p.15). Pittman offered correspondence shorthand courses where he asked students to send Biblical passages written in shorthand to him. He graded these and returned them. Universities and colleges soon began offering classes to students who could not or preferred not to come to the campus. In 1836, the University of London was one of the first. America followed the trend when Illinois' Wesleyan University offered both graduate and undergraduate degrees in 1874. While that program soon faded away, the society to Encourage Study at Home, founded by Anna Eliot Ticknor, "the mother of American correspondence study," in 1873 originated the idea of sharing not only grades with students but also comments (as cited in Verduin & Clark, 1991). The next notable contribution came from the University of Wisconsin-Extension, founded in 1906. Gooch (1997) notes,

Of the 18 correspondence course texts in use before World War I, 16 were engineering-related. Advertising for these courses invited road laborers, foremen, inspectors, high commissioners, engineers, and government officials to enroll and take advantage of the benefits of correspondence study, including increased chances for promotion. Some of the 1911 correspondence study ads pointed to Abe Lincoln, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford as examples of men who had succeeded via the home study route.

Throughout the intervening years, whenever a new medium entered the picture, a new wave of educational delivery arrived. Radio, television, and now computers have all impacted the field of distance education.

Others too have continued the trend. In 1988, according to Kay (1988), there were an estimated ten million people who studied at a distance every year. Thus, when educators discuss distance education, they can mean anything from the traditional follow-the-lesson by mail to online synchronous delivery. However, the most common definition encompasses the idea that the student and teacher are distant from one another in some manner. For instance in the traditional telecourse, a common form of distance education, the student watches a prerecorded lecture. More often than not, if the student has questions, she can telephone a preassigned number. The person who answers her call will be a professional who has experience in whatever field she is studying. Sometimes, she will be able to meet the teacher when she goes to a designated classroom for prearranged tests.

Typically, she will never meet the instructor. Recently, synchronous telecourses have been introduced. In these classes, students can be connected to a "live" classroom via satellite link; thus, many classrooms can be connected to the same link while only one instructor is present. In this case, both teacher and student can see each other through video monitors; discussion occurs with the aid of microphones. This multi-media classroom offers at least some interaction between teacher and student.

Whatever the medium, distance education serves different purposes. Keegan (1986) throughout his career has attempted to classify and categorize this alternative form of learning. The quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learner throughout the length of the learning process distinguishes it from conventional face-to-face instruction (p. 37).

1. The influence of an education organization both in planning and preparation of learning materials and in the provision of student support services: This distinguishes it from private study and teach-yourself programs.
2. The use of technical media, print, audio, video or computer to unite teacher and learner and carry the content of the course.
3. The provision of two-way communication so that the student may benefit from even initiate dialogue: This distinguishes it from other uses of technology in education. (pp. 37-38)

Distance education, then, is a quasi-permanent separation of the learning group throughout the length of the learning process so that people are usually taught as individuals and not in groups, with the possibility of occasional meeting for both didactic and socialization purposes (Keegan, 1986).

Subsections of Chapter II in Order of Appearance
[Distance Education] [Writing Educators Online] [Computers and Composition]
[Opposing Points of View] [Where Online Composition Fits] [The Need for the Study]

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