Maston (2006) defined the first milestone in distance education delivery (as cited in Campbell, 2006) as Plato’s introduction (in 360 B.C.) of a new asynchronous technology to formal education: the written word. According to Duffy (1999), there are two goals that seem to have an impact on the history of distance education delivery. The first one is enabling access to instruction for students unable to attend traditional face-to- face classes. The second goal is to make sure that the quality of instruction delivered in DL is equal or better than it would have been in a traditional face-to-face teaching- learning environment.
Duffy (1999) stated that the quality of the instruction delivered in DL depends on the quality in three dimensions: quality of instruction in terms of pedagogy, interaction between faculty and student, and finally interaction among peers. Duffy believed that once the quality in these three dimensions is ensured, the instruction delivered would be as rich a growth experience as it would have been in a traditional face-to-face class. She pointed out that early DL programs were only designed to achieve the first goal.
Harting & Erthal (2005) stated that the first type of DL program, introduced in the 1700s, was the correspondence school model in which the lessons and student responses were carried by mail. They went on to define the historical evolution of DL and talked about the Lyceum and Chautauqua movements, which were concerned with the instruction of adults and spreading information on the arts, sciences, and humanities. They next reviewed the home-study program of Illinois Wesleyan University in the 1870s and the establishment of "Correspondence University” in 1883 at Ithaca, New York as the first organized DL program. On the other hand, Motamedi (2001)cited a University of Michigan work (1995) in which he gave the year 1892 as the birth date of distance education in the United States, since the University of Wisconsin began using the term correspondence course in its catalogue in that year. Both Motamedi (2001) and Harting & Erthal (2005) described William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of
Chicago, as the founder of correspondence education in the United States. Motamedi (2001) stated that the first known use of correspondence education took place in 1906 and dealt with the areas of elementary and secondary education.
According to Harting & Erthal (2005), after these early implementations of DL a new era dawned in DL history, with the evolution of instructional delivery technologies like slides, motion pictures, and radio. Thomas Edison was one of the pioneers who produced films for the classroom environment (Berg, 2003). Distance educators were so excited about these technological breakthroughs that they were quick to adopt the new technologies and implement them in their programs. The first educational film catalog, listed in 1910, consisted of 1,065 titles (Berg, 2003). According to a study conducted by Penn State University (1997, as cited in Motamedi, 2001), the first Distance Learning course using radio technology was delivered at the University of Wisconsin's radio station WHA in the 1920s. By 1936 some schools—like the University of Wisconsin, University of Kansas, and University of Michigan—adopted radio technology in their credit and self-enrichment adult education courses (Berg, 2003; Harting & Erthal, 2005).
With the invention of television and microwave transmission, distance educators realized the potential of these technologies as the delivery media for education. By the late 1950s, there were 17 programs that used television as part of their instructional materials(Harting & Erthal, 2005). Audio teleconferencing and cable television became a part of DL instructional methods during the 1960s and 1970s. Integration of even more advanced technologies such as satellite, audio, video, computer technologies, e-mail, and the World Wide Web to the DL programs occurred in the 1980s and 1990s (Motamedi, 2001). However, faculty acceptance of the computer technologies took time owing to the “boring and unimaginative software” that was designed for the delivery of education (Harting & Erthal, 2005).
Today, there exist five major technologies to support DL instruction: the Internet, groupware, educational TV, one-way video/two-way video and two-way audio/video. The instructional materials are delivered by textbooks, video/audio tapes, CDs, and the Internet (Harting & Erthal, 2005).
The future of DL seems promising. According to the Distance Education Survey (2007) the outlook for the DL market is strong, and will continue to grow for many years. Not only the market, but also the public acceptance of DL is growing and the competition in distance education at all levels is increasing. In fact, higher education will turn to DL as a “mainstream delivery medium” in the next three years (Distance education survey, 2007). According to Maeroff & Zemsky (2007), in the next five years there will be more hybrid courses in which the students attend traditional face-to-face classes as well as DL classes.
Although this new and powerful technology will play a great role in delivery of distance education, researchers point out that instructors teaching at a distance should always remember that technology should be a tool while teaching in a DL environment, rather than making the instructors themselves the tools. In other words, “technology should adjust to and enhance educators’ and practitioners’ best practices rather than limiting them”(Quinn, 2008).
In summary, DL is becoming a major part of the education process and will continue to be an important part of the educational delivery system of many educational institutions (Maeroff & Zemsky, 2007).