Birth of Distance Learning in India

There is a lot of confusion about the terms distance learning and eLearning. A lot of confusion comes as most people use them in place of each other. Is there any real difference between these things? The answer is yes. In fact, these terms represent totally different concepts. In this article, I will explain this in more detail. Distance learning is an old concept. eLearning came much later. In fact, if you put all the history of education on a 24 hr timeline, then you would see distance learning emerging at 16th hour but eLearning will emerge only at 23:30 hrs. That’s a lot of difference. I will start with a bit of history of distance learning and show where eLearning fits into the whole picture to fill the missing piece of jigsaw problem.

Brief History of Distance Learning

Let’s have a look at brief history of distance learning and then see how eLearning emerged because of pitfalls of distance learning. Probably first instance of distance education was in Indian mythological book - Mahabharata (Fate, Predestination & Human Action in the Mahabharata: A Study in the History of Ideas). In modern times, the distance education started in 16th century. - In 1728: Boston Gazette published an advertisement "Teacher of the New Method of Short Hand," advising that any "Persons in the Country desirous to Learn this Art, may by having the several Lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston." - 1840: Isaac Pitman started using Great Britain's Penny Post for teaching shorthand. First institution sponsored distance education began in the United States in 1874 at Illinois Wesleyan University. - First dedicated university for correspondence was setup in 1883: The Correspondence University of Ithaca, New York (a correspondence school) was founded in 1883. By this time, people were beginning to realize that although distance learning has its advantages but it is fundamentally flawed as it results in minimal progress in student’s knowledge and skill set. They tried to solve it by using technology. In a short story The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster published in 1909, an audio/video communication network is described which is used to deliver lectures a remote audience. Even TV has been used to deliver lectures. In more recent times, open courseware movement has gathered lot of traction. Some of best universities (MIT, Stanford, and Tufts etc.) released their courses under creative commons license. Anyone in the world can access the courses taught at these institutes.