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Correspondence Education
Local teacher Caleb Philips advertised the first shorthand correspondence lessons for any "Person in the County desirous to Learn this Art, may be having several Lessons sent Weekly to them, be as perfectly as those that live in Boston" -
Across the U.S.
The expansion of the US Postal Service perpetuated distance learning correspondence courses. -
Isaac Pitman establishes two-way correspondence education
Isaac Pitman, pioneer of distance education, began teaching shorthand by correspondence in Bath, England. -
Phonographic Correspondence Society founded
The Phonographic Correspondence Society was formed to take over as a means of facilitating distance education in learning shorthand. -
Society to Encourage Studies at Home established
Anna Eliot Ticknor founded the Society to Encourage Studies at Home in Boston, Massachusetts, which was based on the correspondence school model. -
First distance education programs available
Illinois Wesleyan College became the first academic program to offer distance degree programs. -
Adult Education Movement
The Chautauqua Movement: Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent debuted correspondence education as a training program for Sunday school teachers during the summer.
Expansion boomed across the country in the development of large assemblies and seminars of learning. -
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle are established
The first adult education program and correspondence school in the country was founded in Chautauqua, New York. -
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Chautauqua University
Chautauqua University introduced extension and correspondence courses until it closed due to a lack of resources. -
University of Chicago joins Correspondence Education
Pioneered by William Rainey Harper, using Chatauqua Univeristy's model, the University of Chicago offers correspondence courses, leading to high enrollment (3,000 students in 350 courses with 125 instructors) -
The radio comes into existence
Guglielmo Marconi invented the spark transmitter and obtained the first patent for a radio device. -
The Radio Act of 1912
The Radio Act of 1912 sought to address the lack of governing law which regulated land-based public broadcasting stations, thus requiring licenses for all station operators and transmitting apparatuses for interstate or foreign commerce. -
National University Extension Association takes a stand
The National University Extension Association formed in an effort to “develop and advance ideals, methods, and standards in continuing education and university extensions." -
Radio-based education from University of Wisconsin
The University of Wisconsin-Extension was founded as a distance-teaching unit in 1909, followed by the first federally licensed ration station dedicated to educational broadcasting. -
Radio educational broadcasting on the rise
A total of 74 educational institutions have received regular broadcast licenses. By the end of the 1920s, 176 educational institutions had broadcast licenses. -
Penn State and Radio Education
Penn State begins offering courses through the radio. -
Voice and video surface in America
The first long-distance live video and voice transmission was delivered by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Bell Laboratories. -
"School of the air" programs initiated
The Ohio State Department of Education began to offer daily science, literature, history, and music programming over the radio. In 1930 -
The Great Depression takes a toll
The Great Depression in 1929 significantly impacted educational institutions and educational radio broadcasting. Of the 176 radio stations housed at educational institutions, only 35 had survived. -
More radio-based organizations created
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation organized and funded the National Advisory Council for Radio in Education (NACRE) in an effort to promote radio broadcasting as a teaching medium. The Institute for Education by Radio (IER) was also founded, where radio was integrated into the classroom. -
National Committee on Education by Radio (NCER)
The National Committee on Education by Radio (NCER) was created to fight for the preservation of non-profit education radio stations. -
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Educational Television (ETV)
The first use of television broadcasting was experimented by the University of Iowa. -
Telephone-based Education
The University of Wisconsin offers the first statewide, telephone-based education program. -
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to encourage the use of radio and television broadcasting to grow the use of media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes.
You may have hear of the CPB...watch here! -
University of Phoenix
The University of Phoenix is established as the first "virtual college." -
Computer Assisted Learning Center (CALC)
The Computer Assisted Learning Center (CALC) was founded as a computer-oriented adult learning center in Rindge, New Hampshire. -
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Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN)
The Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) is developed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to explore educational alternatives for people unable to attend tradition, in-person classes. -
Learning Management Systems (LMS) surface
WebCT 1.0 LMS, an e-learning system, is released. It is believed that WebCT 1.0 is the predecessor of Blackboard Learn. -
NYU Online
New York University (NYU), already operating one of the largest continuing education schools in the country, was the first large nonprofit university to create a for-profit online education subsidiary, NYU Online. -
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Desire2Learn (D2L)
Desire2Learn (D2L) is created a cloud-based software/LMS to support online and blended learning. -
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SAKAI
The SAKAI project was formed as a collaboration of academic institutions/organizations developing a LMS software. -
Population of Distance Education
Millions of students make up the distance education market (2015, 5.95 million students)