Though it may have come to the forefront in recent years with the growth of online universities and colleges, distance learning has been in existence since the early 1900’s and perhaps before then through mail-based correspondence courses. Even then, distance education owed its success to the development of new forms of media. Starting with catalogs of instructional films, distance education has been adapting to the latest forms of communication ever since.

While radio made an early attempt to provide instruction, it was not until the invention of television that instructional programs really started to garner a lot of interest. Even as early as 1932, schools were working on developing lessons through televised programming, though they did not attain widespread attention until the 1960’s. Televised instruction failed to ever really take hold and in 1967 it was judged that to discontinue it would have little lasting effect on education.

Many attempts were made during the 70’s and 80’s to create high quality educational program and it was Britain’s Open University that served as an inspiration for many programs that arose. These experimented with everything from teleconferencing to videotaped lectures to try to come up with an effective solution for learning at a distance, something that was in high demand with rising college costs and a more mobile population.

Distance learning would get a tried and true partner in the web, however, and the 90’s saw a surge in distance education programs and the students hoping to take them. Through the internet, course materials were relatively inexpensive to deliver and students could communicate with each other and instructors easily through email.

Further advances in internet technology have made the division between online education and more traditional classroom instruction even narrower. Now, lectures can be recorded on video, allowing students to see and listen to their professor as they would in a real class and webcams can make it possible for students to interact with one another in real-time. Quizzes can be taken online, programs have expanded and grown more sophisticated and even some of the most distinguished universities have added distance learning programs.

Distance learning has changed a lot since its early days of correspondence schools and with the rapid fire pace of technological development it’s likely to change a good deal in the coming years as well.

This post was contributed by Meredith Walker, who writes about the online bachelors degree. She welcomes your feedback at MeredithWalker1983 at gmail.com