Distance Education: New Technologies and New Directions

Distance education has been undergoing incremental change over the past decade or so since the advent of the commercial Internet and the World Wide Web. However, we are currently on the cusp of advances that will facilitate experiential learning at a distance, reduce the cost of distance education production, expand access to education, and closely integrate formal education into the fabric of everyday life. Following a review of distance education technology past and present, this paper presents the evolving technologies that will facilitate the most important advances in the field and reviews their early applications.