From Correspondence Education to Online Distance Education

Abstract

Abstract: This chapter is about the history of open, distance, and digital education, with the primary focus on its evolving in the USA and Great Britain. A selection of key developments, trends, and players of more than 150 years includes reference to the nineteenth century correspondence schools, the American Land Grant universities, the pedagogical revolution in Charles Wedemeyer’s Articulated Instructional Media project, and its influence on the teaching model developed in the UK’s Open University. Brief coverage is included of the history of educational radio and television, the early computer networks, and the virtual classrooms. Knowledge of past achievements and failures is essential when planning for the future, and so the chapter aims to encourage research into personalization of learning in the correspondence tradition, most importantly research into institutional change and the reform of national systems.