EDUCATION GOES DIGITAL: The Evolution of Online Learning and the Revolution in Higher Education

摘要

Online learning is the latest in a long list of social technologies that have been introduced to improve distance learning by adding various augmentations, substitutions, or blending of new pedagogical approaches and technologies. Technologies utilized for distance and online learning include: correspondence courses, physical mail, and printed matter; telephone and/or audio recordings; television and/or video recordings; computer-assisted instruction; group communications (asynchronous and synchronous); the Web and multimedia materials; simulation and gaming; collaborative learning; asynchronous learning networks (ALN); collaborative knowledge systems; immersive simulations; and wireless and handheld devices. Most current distance courses have incorporated one or more of these technologies or methodologies. By 2004 at least two million higher-education students in the U.S. were engaged in distance education utilizing various ALN technologies where whole classes can engage in a continuous discourse and group project work independent of time, place, and synchronous constraints of participation. In themselves the technologies have not radically changed the basic concepts of distance learning or university education in terms of the underlying societal structure of education. However, there is a substitution process occurring that will transform higher education.