One of the earliest attempts at distance education was advertised in 1728. This was in the
Boston Gazette for "Caleb Philipps, Teacher of the new method of
Short Hand", who sought students who wanted to learn the skills through weekly mailed lessons. The first distance education course in the modern sense was provided by Sir
Isaac Pitman in the 1840s who taught a system of shorthand by mailing texts transcribed into shorthand on
postcards and receiving transcriptions from his students in return for correction. The element of student feedback was a crucial innovation in Pitman's system. The postage stamp made this scheme for remote education possible, and these efforts were scalable because of the introduction of
uniform postage rates across
England in 1840. This early beginning proved extremely successful and the Phonographic Correspondence Society was founded three years later to establish these courses on a more formal basis. The society paved the way for the later formation of Sir Isaac Pitman Colleges across the country. The first correspondence school in the United States was the
Society to Encourage Studies at Home which was founded in 1873. Founded in 1894,
Wolsey Hall, Oxford was the first distance-learning college in the UK.
University correspondence courses United Kingdom , home of the University of London from 1837 to 1870 The
University of London was the first university to offer degrees to anyone who could pass their examinations, establishing its External Programme in 1858. It had been established in 1836 as an examining and degree-awarding body for affiliated colleges, originally
University College London and
King's College London but with many others added over the next two decades. The affiliated colleges provided certificates that the student had attended a course. A new charter in 1858 removed this requirement, allowing men (and women from 1878) taking instruction at any institution or pursuing a course of self-directed study to sit the examinations and receive degrees. The External Programme was referred to as the "People's University" by
Charles Dickens as it provided access to
higher education to students from less affluent backgrounds. Enrollment increased steadily during the late 19th century, and its example was widely copied elsewhere. However, the university only provided examinations, not instructional material, leading academics to state that "the original degree by external study of the UOL was not a form of distance education". encouraged the development of external university courses at the new University of Chicago in the 1890s.
United States William Rainey Harper, founder and first president of the
University of Chicago, celebrated the concept of extended education, where a research university had satellite colleges elsewhere in the region. In 1892, Harper encouraged correspondence courses to further promote education, an idea that was put into practice by the University of Chicago, U. Wisconsin, Columbia U., and several dozen other universities by the 1920s. Enrollment in the largest private for-profit school based in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, the
International Correspondence Schools grew explosively in the 1890s. Founded in 1888 to provide training for immigrant coal miners aiming to become state mine inspectors or foremen, it enrolled 2500 new students in 1894 and matriculated 72,000 new students in 1895. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The growth was due to sending out complete textbooks instead of single lessons, and the use of 1200 aggressive in-person salesmen. There was a stark contrast in pedagogy: Education was a high priority in the
Progressive Era, as American high schools and colleges expanded greatly. For men who were older or were too busy with family responsibilities, night schools were opened, such as the
YMCA school in Boston that became
Northeastern University. Private correspondence schools outside of the major cities provided a flexible, focused solution. Large corporations systematized their training programs for new employees. The National Association of Corporation Schools grew from 37 in 1913 to 146 in 1920. Private schools that provided specialized technical training to everyone who enrolled, not just employees of one company, began to open across the nation in the 1880s. Starting in Milwaukee in 1907, public schools began opening free vocational program.
International Conference The International Conference for Correspondence Education held its first meeting in 1938. The goal was to provide individualized education for students, at low cost, by using a pedagogy of testing, recording, classification, and differentiation. Since then, the group has changed its name to the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), with its main office in
Oslo, Norway.
Open universities The
Open University (OU) in the United Kingdom was founded by the then
Labour government led by
Harold Wilson. Based on the vision of
Michael Young, planning commenced in 1965 under the
Minister of State for Education,
Jennie Lee, who established a model for the Open University as one of widening access to the highest standards of scholarship in higher education and setting up a planning committee consisting of university vice-chancellors, educationalists, and television broadcasters, chaired by Sir Peter Venables. The British Broadcasting Corporation's (
BBC) Assistant Director of Engineering at the time,
James Redmond, had obtained most of his qualifications at
night school, and his natural enthusiasm for the project did much to overcome the technical difficulties of using television to broadcast teaching programs. as well as undertaking research in other disciplines.
Walter Perry was appointed the OU's first vice-chancellor in January 1969, and its foundation secretary was
Anastasios Christodoulou. The election of the new
Conservative government under the leadership of
Edward Heath in 1970 led to budget cuts under
Chancellor of the Exchequer Iain Macleod (who had earlier called the idea of an Open University "blithering nonsense"). However, the OU accepted its first 25,000 students in 1971, adopting a radical open admissions policy. At the time, the total student population of conventional universities in the United Kingdom was around 130,000.
Athabasca University,
Canada's open university, was created in 1970 and followed a similar, though independently developed, pattern. The Open University inspired the creation of
Spain's
National University of Distance Education (1972) and
Germany's
University of Hagen (1974). There are now many similar institutions around the world, often with the name "Open University", as in
Italy (in
English or in the local language). Most
open universities use distance education technologies as delivery methods, though some require attendance at local study centers or at regional "summer schools". Some open universities have grown to become
mega-universities.
COVID-19 pandemic The
COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of the vast majority of schools worldwide for in-person learning. The pandemic also exposed gaps in teachers’ preparedness to use digital pedagogy effectively, including challenges with interactive instructional design and unfamiliarity with platforms such as Zoom and Teams. A recent study showed that Google Classroom was the most used platform by students followed by Microsoft Teams and Zoom, respectively. The less-used platforms included
Blackboard Learn,
DingTalk,
Tencent, and
WhatsApp. However, the most preferred platforms by students were Microsoft Teams followed by Google Classroom and Zoom. Although Google Classroom was the most used by students as decided by their lectures, Microsoft Teams was the most preferred by those students. Distanced education during the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted synchronous learning for many students and teachers; where educators were no longer able to teach in real-time and could only switch to asynchronous instruction, this significantly and negatively affected their coping with the transition, and posed various legal issues, especially in terms of copyright. The physical surroundings during the COVID-19 pandemic are seen by university instructors as having a detrimental effect on the quality of distance education. However, where the lecture is delivered and the type of faculty do not show any significant statistical variances in the quality of distance education. The shift away from real-time instruction to asynchronous learning modes has posed significant challenges, impacting both the teaching and learning experience. Educators, grappling with this abrupt transition, have faced hurdles in effectively engaging students and delivering course content, leading to heightened stress and burnout among faculty members. Additionally, this shift has raised legal concerns, particularly regarding copyright issues related to the dissemination of educational materials in digital formats. Post-COVID-19 pandemic, while some educational institutions went back to physical classes, others switched to blended learning or kept up their online distance learning. A recent study about the benefits and drawbacks of online learning found that students have had a harder time producing their own work. The study suggests teachers should cut back on the amount of information taught and incorporate more activities during the lesson, in order for students to create their own work.
Web conferencing has become more popular since 2007. Researchers have found that people in
online classes perform just as effectively as participants in conventional learning classes. Furthermore, digital classroom technologies allow those living remotely to access learning, and it enables the student to fit learning into their schedule more easily. == Technologies ==