Online Learning Environments

Distance education is an instructional delivery system that allows students to participate in an educational opportunity without being physically present in the same location as the instructor. Although print-based correspondence study is the traditional method of distance education, more contemporary approaches rely heavily on various forms of instructional technology (Garrison, 1987). The reason for much of the growth in distance education programs in recent years is the development of the Internet and improvement of technologies that support online learning environments. For example, among higher education institutions offering distance education, use of two-way interactive video and one-way prerecorded video was essentially the same in 1997-98 as in 1995, whereas the use of asynchronous Internet-based technologies nearly tripled in that same time period (Lewis, Snow, Farris, Levin, and Greene, 1999), and 88 percent of higher education institutions now plan to use Internet courses as their primary mode of instructional delivery for distance education (Waits, Lewis, and Greene, 2003). This change is not new to the distance education community, which has seen technology-based educational innovations come and go with much fanfare. The instructional films of the 1940s were expected to radically change the educational delivery system, as were instructional radio and television. Although each of these technology innovations had some impact on educational programs, they did little to change the fundamental nature of education itself. The Internet and computer technology, as the next generation of technological innovation to affect distance education, appears to have the power to significantly alter the education landscape.