A history of online education: Expanding the reach from correspondence to virtual learning spaces
By sbliven83
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The first informal correspondence courses were advertised in the Boston Gazette by Caleb Phillips (Ferrer, n.d.). Phillips promised that high-quality education could be delivered using weekly lessons sent through the mail (Siemens, Gasevic, & Dawson, 2015). These lessons were meant to teach shorthand (Erthal & Harting, 2005)
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Correspondence course materials (Drexel University Online, 2017) are officially offered for the first time by The University of Chicago (Ferrer, n.d.). However, this was a very limited way to perform coursework, since formal communication was only one-way (Wolfe, 2014).
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Since radios were becoming household items, Pennsylvania State University began broadcasting courses using this medium (Drexel University Online, 2017; Ferrer, n.d.). For nearly 20 years, over 200 educational radio stations were employed (Wolfe, 2014). While this type of correspondence reached a larger audience, the interaction between instructor and student still had major limitations (Siemens, Gasevic, & Dawson, 2015).
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WOI-TV, a station created by Iowa State University, becomes the first practical educationally-owned television station (Ferrer, n.d.).
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Other major institutions, namely The University of Houston, begin offering for-credit correspondence courses using educational television stations (Ferrer, n.d.; Drexel University Online, 2017). And, while the US had definitely dabbled in using radio and TV media for correspondence of education, the UK’s Open University really took advantage of these types of mass media (Craig, 2015).
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J.C.R. Licklider of MIT is the first to come up with the idea that would eventually be known as the internet (Ferrer, n.d.).
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The University of Wisconsin starts using telephone correspondence learning (Ferrer, n.d.; Drexel University Online, 2017). While this form of learning does help to foster some peer-interaction (whereas former modalities only offered student-instructor interaction), the number of students conversing with each other was small (Siemens, Gasevic, & Dawson, 2015).
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The internet is born (Ferrer, n.d.; Drexel University Online, 2017)! ARPANET, created by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) is first developed by using a physical interface message processor (IMP) network (Ferrer, n.d.). The four institutions to use ARPANET are UCLA, UC-Santa Barbara, Stanford, and The University of Utah (Ferrer, n.d.). This is one of the biggest milestones in distance education (Siemens, Gasevic, & Dawson, 2015).
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Coastline Community College is born as the first virtual campus (Dew, 2012). The college offers its degree programs solely through telecommuting, which incorporated various forms of mass media to deliver instruction (Ferrer, n.d.). These delivery methods included telephone, TV, radio, records, and tapes (Ferrer, n.d.).
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The Western Behavioral Sciences Institute becomes the first school to offer a fully-online college program (Ferrer, n.d.). This is the beginning of online learning as we know it today (Drexel University Online, 2017; Dew, 2012).
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Nova Southeastern University is the first school to offer an accredited online Graduate program (Ferrer, n.d.).
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Tim Berners-Lee births the “World Wide Web” (Ferrer, n.d.; Drexel University Online, 2017).
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Jones International University goes live (Ferrer, n.d.). This is the first fully-accredited, fully-virtual university (Ferrer, n.d.). However, the school shut down in 2015 (Ferrer, n.d.).
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By this point in history, approximately 81% of all Colleges and Universities offer at least 1 online course (Drexel University Online, 2017).
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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are first launched (Ferrer, n.d.). This spearheads a long list of Open Educational Resources (OERs) (Tuomi, 2013).
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Approximately one-third of all higher education students are enrolled in at least one online course (Drexel University Online, 2017). Also, the University of Florida-Online goes live, becoming the first completely virtual public university (Ferrer, n.d.).
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What does our future have to offer? With the inclusion of The Internet of Things (IoT), wearable technology (The New Media Consortium, 2017), and virtual reality (Drexel University Online, 2017), the possibilities are nearly limitless!
