Part I: The History of Distance Learning
by Logan Smith
Distance Learning may seem like a newer concept for many people, but the idea has been evolving since the 1700s. Distance learning offered an education to students outside of the big cities, expanding learning opportunities for many young people. While the technological advancements of web based learning have mostly advanced in our time, the following timeline shows the distance learning concept evolving into what we know today.
1728 – On March 20, Caleb Phillips, a teacher of short hand ran an ad in the Boston Gazette advertising that “persons in the Country desirous to Learn this Art, may by having the several lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston.”
1840 – Isaac Pitman, a teacher who developed the most widely used system of shorthand begins teaching his lessons through Great Britain’s Penny Post.
1858 – The University of London began offering a distance learning degree through an External Programme.
1874 – University level educators in the United States pick up on the distance trend, when Illinois Wesleyan University allowed both bachelor and graduate degrees to be obtained from a distance.
1882 – The Chautauqua movement gave the popular push to what they called “correspondence education.” Chautauqua assemblies spread throughout rural America until about the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua featured speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day and brought education and culture to the smaller towns of the U.S.
1892 – More schools are picking up on the idea and the term “distance education” was first used in a catalog for the1982 University of Wisconsin–Madison school year.
1911 – The rest of the world began to pick up on the trend, as the University of Austrailia began its Department of Correspondence Studies.
1920s – An educational psychology professor at Ohio State University named Sidney Pressey developed the first known “teaching machine.” The machine offered practice exercises and multiple choice questions.
1929 – Directory of the School of Education of University of Alberta, M.E. LaZerte developed instructional devices for teaching and learning. These devices minimized instructor involvement. One of his devices was a “problem cylinder” which presented a problem to a student and checked whether both the answer and the steps to get there were correct.
1932 – Seven years before the television was introduced the State University of Iowa had already began experimenting with transmitting educational courses
1953 – Distance Learning becomes televised. KUHT, the first public TV station in the United States offers televised college credit classes for The University of Houston. These live telecasts made up about 38% of the station’s program schedule, which ran for 13 to 15 hours a week, mostly at night.