Online learning is no longer just limited to colleges and universities. Right since primary school, online learning is gradually being incorporated into the curriculum. Beyond high school, online learning is steadily increasing its market share at the pre-university level. Furthermore, e-learning is expanding in presence beyond the traditional fields as well.
Online learning has evolved far beyond its original capabilities. It is no longer limited to a didactic method, which had a one-way monologue from the teacher to the student. Current advances in online learning enable the student to play an active role in the learning process, with regular feedback and assessments.
This has greatly improved the effectiveness of the teaching system, bringing it on par with classroom-based learning. Some of the features that give an edge to online education are:. Smartphones have played a crucial role in making online learning viable. It is rapidly gaining ground even in rural areas, bringing high-quality education, at par with the best in the world, available to the masses.
Massive open online courses known as MOOCs are a promising new field. The total number of students enrolled in MOOCs has risen to about million now. Thus, the recent developments in online learning can be broadly attributed to the following factors:. The global online learning market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 9. This is an astounding amount that is full of potential. Massive Open Online Courses MOOCs , a free online course resource, becomes available through Udacity and enables learners to take classes asynchronously at their own pace.
The COVID pandemic forces nearly every college and university to switch to online learning rather than hold classes in person. A Brief Timeline of Online Education — The Western Behavioral Sciences Institute uses computer conferencing to provide a distance education program for business executives.
Learn more, do more. More topic-relevant resources to expand your knowledge. Popular with our students. Drawing upon the well-known model of the British Open University, countries such as Pakistan, India, and China have combined modem methods of teaching with emerging technologies in order to provide low-cost instruction for basic literacy and job training.
Turkey has recently joined those nations involved in large-scale distance learning. Because of the economies of size and distribution, both industrialized and developing countries have embarked on distance education programs. In many cases, local experts are not available to develop original programs in the language and culture of the people.
For this reason, the majority of educational programs are either used intact from the host country or are superficially translated with very few adaptations to the local culture. When this is done, the results are often unsuccessful. The cultural values of the program designer become dominant, desirable, and used as the standard. There are many examples of programs from North America, Australia, Great Britain, and Europe that were purchased but never used in Africa and Asia because the material was not relevant in those countries.
Because the appropriate design of instructional material is a critical element in its effectiveness, the issue of "who designs what and for whom" is central to any discussion of the economic, political, and cultural dangers that face distance educators using information technologies Mclsaac, There have been a variety of efforts to identify theoretical foundations for the study of distance education. Thus far, there has been little agreement about which theoretical principles are common to the field and even less agreement on how to proceed in conducting programmatic research.
AECT toll-free Search this Handbook for:. Distance Education PDF History of Distance Education. Theory of Distance Education. Distance Learning Technologies. Future Directions and Emerging Technologies. Research Related to Media in Distance Education.
The growth of distance learning programs has many important side-effects on higher education. For example, the profile of a typical undergraduate student has changed significantly. An increasing number of universities, like the University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offer free online classes called open courseware that feature video lectures and quizzes taken directly from class discussion.
As technology improves and online programs become respected, education experts predict that the distance education will continue to expand and complexify in the future. Some leaders in the realm predict that the number of online students will grown to almost 19 million by If you want to play a role in the growing field of online education, the study of computer science can provide you with a strong foundation in the technical and theoretical aspects of computer technology, giving you the skills you need to create innovative tools for distance learners.
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