Moore & Kearsley (2012) defined distance education as teaching and learning that takes place in a distance where the teacher and the learner use technology to communicate. There are other definitions or terminologies that are in use today to identify learning at a distance. It is true that each definition has its merits, and it is also true that distance education has come a long way since the 1800s to the present. There are lots in innovations and improvements in the distance learning environment; technologies have been developed to accommodate new methods of learning and teaching. Also, governments, and private citizens as well as corporations have gone into the business of establishing high schools, colleges and universities for online/distance learning. The distance education as we know it has undergone what educators call Waves of Distance Education Development that started about 1840s. Some have argued that we have had about four waves and are expecting a fifth or no wave. Others think the fifth wave is already here.
Modern university has to balance three competing forces: access, quality and cost (Daniel, 1999). The pertinent questions that distance learning or education should be asking is, “Has Distance Education Reached and Evolutionary Dead End?” Can DE access or the number of enrollment be increased without additional cost or a reduction in the quality of instruction? Technology is seen as key to distance learning that also serves as the balancing bridge between access, quality and costs; this technology is threatened through proliferation, high cost, government policies or the Internet, and for-profit posture of tech manufacturers. One outstanding question today is how are higher education institutions responding to the potential and challenge of technology; and how are they managing their technological resources? This answer to this last question may be found when we study OMDE 606—Costs and Economics of Distance Education and E-learning (UMUC MDE Core Course).
I don’t have the answers to all these questions but I believe that these are valid, important questions that will need to be addressed now or in the near future because distance education cost of attendance and resources have started its journey—the same path that traditional educations took.
Moore, M. G., & Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance education: A systems view of online learning. (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Daniel, J. (1999). Mega-universities and knowledge media. London: Kogan Page.
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