Distance learning, also known as distance education, independent study, or correspondence courses, has been around for decades, yet the concept existed long before this century. For example, Gary Klass (2000) notes that as far back as 360 B.C., Plato employed the then-new tool of writing to publish Socrates’ Dialogues for his students instead of teaching this to them face-to-face. In the Middle Ages, before universities really blossomed, geographically distant philosophers and scholars shared ideas through letters and other texts. And as early as the 1840s, Isaac Pitman used the Penny Post to train phonographers by shorthand correspondence (“A Brief History,” 2002). The twentieth-century’s formal distance learning courses, on the other hand, have emerged mostly through high schools and universities who wanted to create an alternative to students physically attending class. The University of Chicago created the first university distance learning program in 1959 (“A Brief History,” 2002), and then as television became increasingly available, distance learning experienced a major boom when PBS and other organizations produced educational television courses.

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