Distance Education
Definitions
 | California Distance
Learning Project: What is Distance Learning?
The California Distance Learning Project's definition is: "Distance Learning (DL) is
an instructional delivery system which connects learners with educational resources. DL
provides educational access to learners not enrolled in educational institutions and can
augment the learning opportunities of current students. The implementation of DL is a
process which uses available resources and will evolve to incorporate emerging
technologies."
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| Distance Education: A Systems
View: What is Distance Education?
As defined by Michael Moore, then director of The American Center for the Study of
Distance Education, Penn State: "Distance education is planned learning that normally
occurs in a different place from teaching and as a result requires special techniques of
course design, special instructional techniques, special methods of communication by
electronic and other technology, as well as special organizational and administrative
arrangements". From the text Distance Education: A Systems View, co-authored by Greg
Kearsley [California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996].
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| Instructional Telecommunications
Council: Distance Education
The ITC definition is: "The process of extending learning, or delivering
instructional resource-sharing opportunities, to locations away from a classroom, building
or site, to another classroom, building or site by using video, audio, computer,
multimedia communications, or some combination of these with other traditional delivery
methods."
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| Sloan-C View:
Coming to Terms: ALN
From the publication: Sloan-C View, June, 2003, vol 2, n4: "Online educators want to
say exactly what is new about higher learning online today, yet a proliferation of terms
complicates things. In Sloan-C listserv conversations about whether distance or
distributed education is the proper name for it, some useful clarifications emerged."
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| United States Distance Learning Association:
Distance Education
The USDLA definition: "The acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated
information and instruction, encompassing all technologies and other forms of learning at
a distance."
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| Western
Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications: What is distance education?
From the Distance Education: A Consumer's Guide...What distance learners need to know,
published by Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications: "Distance
education is instruction that occurs when the instructor and student are separated by
distance or time, or both." The Guide continues with other practical information for
the potential distance education student.
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| Association
for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT): Distance Education: Towards a
Definition and Glossary of Terms
This detailed publication by Lee Ayers Schlosser and Michael Simonson was sponsored by the
Definitions and Terminology Committee Association for Educational Communications and
Technology (AECT). The publication is available for sale to AECT members. |
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