Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school,[1][2] or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance;[3] today, it usually involves online education (also known as online learning, remote learning or remote education) through an online school. A distance learning program can either be completely online, or a combination of both online and traditional in-person (also known as, offline) classroom instruction (called hybrid[4] or blended).[5]
Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent educational modes in distance education.[1] A number of other terms (distributed learning, e-learning, m-learning, virtual classroom, etc.) are used roughly synonymously with distance education. E-learning has shown to be a useful educational tool. E-learning should be an interactive process with multiple learning modes for all learners at various levels of learning. The distance learning environment is an exciting place to learn new things, collaborate with others, and retain self-discipline.[6]
Historically, it involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via mail, but with the evolution of different technologies it has evolved to include video conferencing, TV, and the Internet.[7]
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