Chapter 6: Visions for a Virtual University

What Is Distance Learning?
pp. 206-207

Few things pedagogic sound more dubious than that vintage phrase "correspondence course." But maybe it's time to rehabilitate this unfortunate term. The Internet offers a broad range of online learning experiences, including regular classes that do seem to be correspondence courses, more or less, but many of them are offered by major universities charging tuition and even offering credit toward a degree.14

In chapter 3, we briefly discussed the role that media innovations played in educational experiments earlier in this century. Radio and television in particular were thought to present exciting possibilities for extending the reach of the traditional classroom. A variety of educational schemes, from correspondence courses to televised extension courses, fall under the definition of distance learning. The term in fact simply refers to "a variety of educational models that have in common the physical separation of the faculty member and some or all of the students."15 In distance education, as in the traditional classroom, instructors and students come together to study a body of knowledge and to assess and apply what has been learned. The principle difference between traditional education and distance learning is that the latter uses "technology to either enhance or serve as delivery medium for one or all of these activities."16

Correspondence courses, developed in Britain along with the introduction of the modern postal service, were the earliest form of distance education. Each discovery and advance in communications technology has resulted in developments in distance education. In 1921, with introduction of radio broadcasting, the federal government gave the Latter Day Saints' University of Salt Lake the first educational radio license. The University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota followed quickly and received their radio licenses the following year. In 1945, with the advent of television, Iowa State applied for the first educational television (ETV) license and started broadcasting in 1950.17 The launching of Sputnik in 1957 stirred national interest in educational reform, along with an awareness that children would have to be educated for a new type of society in part molded by "modern communications such as radio, film, television and computers [that] had created an information-rich society. Schools were no longer the only center of information, but had to compete for student attention."18

One of the earliest implementations of educational computing was a research and development program on computer-assisted instruction in mathematics and reading, established by Patrick Suppes and Richard Atkinson at Stanford in 1963. They sought to free students from the lock-step process of group-paced instruction and developed individualized instructional strategies that allowed the learner to correct his or her responses through rapid feedback. The self-paced programs allowed a student to take an active role in the learning process. Mastery was obtained through drill and practice.19

In the late 1960s, in order to make access to computers widely available, the National Science Foundation (NSF) supported the development of thirty regional computing networks, which included three hundred institutions of higher education and some secondary schools. By 1974, over two million students used computers in their classes. In 1963, only 1 percent of U.S. secondary schools used computers for instructional purposes. By 1975, 55 percent of the schools had access and 23 percent were using computers primarily for instruction.20

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