A Masterful Education

The area of distance education has simply exploded in the past few years. Distance education has been around for a long time (think about correspondence courses and the like), but, as with so many other things, the 'Net has completely overtaken the distance learning arena and has changed it forever. It is now very possible to earn entire degrees using only distance education courses, and there are courses of every variety available to the distance student - technical courses, associate or bachelor degree courses and distance masters courses.

The concept of distance learning has evolved with the use of technology in its history. While in the United States, United Kingdom, and other technologically advanced countries, distance learning and the 'Net are synonymous, this is not true world wide. For example, radio broadcast courses remains a very viable form in many of the developing countries, because of its affordability and its reach. In India, the popular FM Channel is used by universities to deliver a wide range of educational programs in such diverse areas as teacher education, rural development, marketing, agriculture and conservation, science, creative writing, accountancy, mass communication, in addition to all the traditional courses in liberal arts, business administration, and so on.

The decreasing cost and increasing popularity of mp3 players, PDAs and the new "smart phone" technology has opened an additional path for the delivery of distance education content. It is now fairly common for college professors to prepare course content that students can listen to or even watch as a Podcast. Additionally, the United States military has been working with colleges and universities to make entire courses available on a PDA to deployed active military persons.

The main areas in which distance education still flourishes include correspondence conducted through postal mail services, telecourses, (which are simply broadcast medium presentations, during which content is broadcast over radio or television), computer courses (normally, content stored on a CD-ROM, where the student interacts with that content), mobile learning (which involves students accessing course content through a wireless server downloaded to some mobile device), and Internet based courses (which can be conducted either synchronously, asynchronously or using a combination of the two methods).

On the "new and exciting" front of distance education, is the 3D virtual world of the online community called "Second Life". There are several ground breaking institutions using Second Life for instruction including Princeton University, Bloomsburg University, University of Edinburgh (UK), Rice University, Vassar College, University of Derby (UK), and the Open University (UK). Entire online courses (including distance masters courses) have been delivered using Second Life. Second Life has also been used to present foreign language instruction. ESL (English as a Second Language) has been presented through several schools (including the British Council). Instituto Cervantes, which is the language and cultural institute of Spain, has an island on Second Life.