Prior to starting a course in distance education or reading an article about it, my definition of it had been a form of education whereby the institution is far away from the student thus requiring the use of two-way communication systems for sharing instructions, resources, and assessment.
I had recently shared my observation on distance education with an elderly architect who studied by correspondence in the mid- 20th century. The octogenarian had demanded to know about how we as a school, administered our online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown to which I responded that it is nothing different than what he experienced in his days under the correspondence study arrangement. The difference, I observed to him, only has to do with the means of delivery and communication of instructional resources and assessment. I made it clear to him that whereas in his days they depended on the postal system, we now depend on modern telecommunication tools, the internet, and the World Wide Web.
The Simonson, Smaldino, and Zvacek’s Learning Resources for this course has however made me see different definitions of distance learning, the most appealing being the definition that incorporates the fact that distance learning is institutionally based, characterized by the student being spatially or temporally separated from the teacher, who both share learning resources using interactive communications.
Hence, I would define distance learning as a form of institutionally based learning whereby the student and the teacher who are separated by distance and/or time, share instructional resources through the application of modern telecommunication tools.
I would submit that one reason the definition of distance learning ever changed would be the emergence of technological tools and the understanding of the components of distance learning. A definition that fails to capture distance learning as being institutionally based, for instance, might have been harped on the thought that a single lecturer not based in any institution might have been able to administer distance learning.
The evolution of distance learning has been shaped mainly by technology and I posit that the future of the enterprise will still be heavily impacted by technology. Largely, stakeholders will be faced with the challenge of choosing tools to use for the implementation of their distance learning plans because there will continue to be a multiplication of tools. But as one of the learning resources indicated, most of the technological tools will be doing virtually similar things (delivering and sharing instructional resources).
Bibliography
Simonson, M., Zvacek, S. M., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education 7th Edition. IAP.