What is Online Learning?

Whether you call it online learning, distance learning or e-learning, today all three terms refer to the same thing – the ability to take a course without having to be at a specific physical location at an established time. While the terms mean roughly the same thing, all courses are not created equal. The makeup of courses can vary dramatically depending on the content being delivered, the instructor’s style and the expectations of the learner. 

While there are many variations in distance learning courses, they exhibit several common traits:

• Self-paced, self-directed and self-motivated – the learner has the freedom to choose when they will study and complete assignments as long as course requirements are met.

• Student diversity – students can take a course anytime and anywhere. As a result, course participants are likely to be from multiple locations and have varied backgrounds that enrich the overall learning experience.

• Basic computer proficiency – most courses today require the use of a computer with Internet access. The use of email, chat rooms, and the downloading of information is commonplace in online courses.

Ultimately, the goal of any learning experience is to be exposed to new ideas, concepts or ways of doing things and to apply or transfer what you learn to new situations and contexts. Today’s online learning tools achieve this by offering students the flexibility to mix “instructor time” (teacher interaction), “team time” (classmate interaction) and “my time” (personal study and reflection) to accommodate their preferred learning style. By mixing these three components appropriately, today's online courses are capable of offering an engaging, comprehensive and effective learning experience.

Types of Courses

Distance learning courses cover a spectrum of delivery methods from traditional, totally offline to fully web-delivered, utilizing live or recorded web-broadcasts of lectures and workshops supported by extensive online collaboration between/among students and/or instructor. Most courses fall someplace in between the two extremes. Today, virtually all courses offer ongoing communication between the student, teacher and other students with web-based tools such as email and bulletin boards.

Courses generally fall into four categories: offline, web-enabled, web-enhanced, and web-delivered... as described below.

Trends in Course Development

With the widespread use of broadband Internet connections in businesses, schools and homes and the availability of powerful course development and delivery systems, more and more courses are taking greater advantage of the web's multi-media and collaboration capabilities to deliver real-time highly interactive seminars and workshops. Today's online courses can provide the best of the online and offline worlds -- valuable "face-to-face" interaction with the teacher and ongoing anytime collaboration with fellow students. The decision to provide a "web-enabled" course vs. a completely "web-delivered" course will be driven by the nature of the content and the desired learning outcomes.

Chart 1: Relative Amount of Web Usage by Course Type