Fraser Valley Distance Education School (FVDES) is one of the largest distance education schools in British Columbia, Canada. It offers both online and paper-based distance learning from kindergarten to grade 12. FVDES's students include both school age and adult learners. Most live in the Lower Mainland of B.C., but a growing number live in other areas of the province or overseas. FVDES is a publicly funded school that follows the British Columbia school curriculum and offers full "Dogwood" certification upon graduation.
Founded in 1990, Fraser Valley Distance Education School is part of a provincial group of nine distance education schools located throughout British Columbia. These schools have their roots in traditional correspondence distance education but are rapidly undergoing change to provide online (or internet) course delivery.
FVDES currently has over 500 full-time online learners. The school also has around 3000 correspondence students who use predominantly paper-based correspondence materials, although many are starting to enroll in the new online course offerings. In addition, there are approximately 300 part-time online students. Two new areas of growth are adult learners and students who continue to attend regular "brick and mortar" schools.
FVDES's online and paper-based programs offer different features and different ways of learning. Online courses are more structured, and feature full-time teacher support and online instruction. They also have email access, virtual classrooms and discussion groups. Correspondence booklets (though not textbooks) have largely been phased out of the online courses. On the other hand, correspondence (paper-based) courses offer greater flexibility and a wide range of course options. Students may take some courses online and others by paper; students make their choice based on their personal needs. At the elementary level, optional portfolio-based assessment is a popular option.
To address the needs of online learners, the school has moved rapidly to incorporate online course offerings and is currently undergoing unprecedented growth. FVDES now offers a complete selection of the core academic courses, including Planning 10 and provincial exam courses like Math 12, History 12, and Biology 12. More elective courses are under development. FVDES is dedicated to offering individual teachers for each course, rather than providing non-specialist tutors. Over the past three years, the on-site staff has grown to twenty-five elementary, middle school and senior secondary teacher, plus five special needs teachers and four teaching assistants. Technical help has also grown from a single part-time technician to two full-time technicians. Other developments at FVDES include an expanded number of field trips (for example, swimming, skiing, geocaching, skating) and regularly scheduled art-based activities.
Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via mail. Today, it usually involves online education and the learning is usually mediated by some form of technology. A distance learning program can be completely distance learning, or a combination of distance learning and traditional classroom instruction. Other modalities include distance learning with complementary virtual environment or teaching in virtual environment (e-learning).
Thompson Rivers University is a public teaching and research university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and vocational training. Its main campus is in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, and its name comes from the two rivers which converge in Kamloops, the North Thompson and South Thompson. The university has a satellite campus in Williams Lake, BC and a distance education division called TRU-Open Learning. It also has several international partnerships through its TRU World division. TRU is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) at the associate, baccalaureate, and master's degree levels.
A virtual campus or e campus, refers to the online offerings of a college or university where college work is completed either partially or wholly online, often with the assistance of the teacher, professor, or teaching assistant. Many colleges and universities now offer such courses either partially or wholly online. There are an estimated 4,500 such institutions with total enrollments approaching perhaps 2 million.
A virtual university provides higher education programs through electronic media, typically the Internet. Some are bricks-and-mortar institutions that provide online learning as part of their extended university courses while others solely offer online courses. They are regarded as a form of distance education. The goal of virtual universities is to provide access to the part of the population who would not be able to attend a physical campus, for reasons such as distance—in which students live too far from a physical campus to attend regular classes; and the need for flexibility—some students need the flexibility to study at home whenever it is convenient for them to do so.
Rowan College at Burlington County (RCBC) is a public community college in Burlington County, New Jersey. Main facilities are located in Mount Laurel with other campuses in Mount Holly, Willingboro and Joint Base.
Florida Virtual School (FLVS) was founded in 1997 as the first statewide Internet-based public high school in the United States. In 2000, FLVS was established as an independent educational entity by the Florida Legislature. Recognized as its own district within the state, it provides online instruction to Florida students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. As part of the Florida public education system, the online school serves students in all 67 Florida districts. Operating as a public school offering both individual online courses and full-time enrollment options, the school's funding is tied directly to student performance.
It is a useful model to accommodate a variety of learners.
The Open Training and Education Network, often abbreviated OTEN, is an Open education service offered by TAFE NSW. It was rebranded as TAFE Digital during the OneTAFE restructure at the beginning of 2018. Students may enrol from anywhere in Australia, while operationally the program is run by the Western Sydney Institute of TAFE. OTEN courses are delivered using a range of media, including printed materials, videos, CD-ROMs and DVDs. Some OTEN courses and units are delivered online. OTEN students may also access local TAFE NSW library facilities.
The University of Missouri High School is a distance learning K-12 high school administered by the University of Missouri, a public state university located in Columbia, Missouri and the flagship of the University of Missouri System. The program was founded in 1999 as part of the university's Center for Distance and Independent Study (CDIS). Its mission is to provide learning opportunities in addition to traditional high schools. The school offers more than 150 courses by certified Missouri teachers, from the elementary through high school levels. Each year thousands of students enroll in the high school to succeed in their home high schools and other settings.
TVO ILC is the Canadian province of Ontario's designated provider of distance education and the exclusive provider of General Educational Development (GED) Testing in Ontario.
Higher education in Alberta refers to the post secondary education system for the province of Alberta. The Ministry of Advanced Education in Alberta oversees educational delivery through universities, publicly funded colleges, technical institutions, and private colleges. These institutions offer a variety of academic and vocational pursuits. Students have access to post-secondary options through most regions of Alberta, and a developed articulation system allows for increased student mobility.
Higher education in British Columbia is delivered by 25 publicly funded institutions that are composed of eleven universities, eleven colleges, and three institutes. This is in addition to three private universities, five private colleges, and six theological colleges. There are also an extensive number of private career institutes and colleges. Over 297,000 students were enrolled in post-secondary institutions in British Columbia in the 2019-2020 academic year.
South Island Distance Education School (SIDES) is a public, full-service, K-12 school, offering distributed learning courses to all students in British Columbia and is a member of School District 63 Saanich.
A virtual learning environment (VLE) in educational technology is a web-based platform for the digital aspects of courses of study, usually within educational institutions. They present resources, activities, and interactions within a course structure and provide for the different stages of assessment. VLEs also usually report on participation and have some level of integration with other institutional systems. In North America, VLE's are often referred to as Learning Management Systems (LMS).
Langley Education Centre (LEC) is a public high school in Langley, British Columbia, part of School District 35 Langley.
North Coast Distance Education at www.ncdes.ca is a public distance education program in Northern British Columbia offering distributed learning courses to students in BC. NCDE is a member of Learn Now BC and BC Learning Network
Alberta Distance Learning Centre (ADLC) was an educational organization that provided distance and distributed education services to primary and secondary students. It was based out of Barrhead, Alberta, Canada. ADLC ceased operation following the 2020-21 school year after it was defunded by the provincial government.
Online learning involves courses offered by primary institutions that are 100% virtual. Online learning, or virtual classes offered over the internet, is contrasted with traditional courses taken in a brick-and-mortar school building. It is a development in distance education that expanded in the 1990s with the spread of the commercial Internet and the World Wide Web. The learner experience is typically asynchronous but may also incorporate synchronous elements. The vast majority of institutions utilize a learning management system for the administration of online courses. As theories of distance education evolve, digital technologies to support learning and pedagogy continue to transform as well.
The University of Mississippi High School is an accredited, comprehensive, online high school operated by the Office of Pre-College Programs in the Division of Outreach and Continuing Education at the University of Mississippi. It offers online classes for students in grades 7 through 12, allowing students to earn high school Carnegie units, dual credit through the university, and a high school diploma from anywhere in the United States or the world.
The Open Learning Institute of British Columbia (OLI) was a single mode, distance education post-secondary provincial institute in Canada, created in 1978 by the Government of British Columbia. Its mandate was to improve access to higher education across the province by means of distance education and other open learning methods. Inspired in part by the UK Open University model, it used a combination of print-based courses, audiovisual media and telephone tutoring to offer courses up to the baccalaureate degree level. In 1988, it was subsumed in part as the BC Open University under the new Open Learning Agency (OLA). In 2005 it was amalgamated as the Open Learning Division with the newly designated Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops (TRU), BC. TRU was formerly known as the University College of the Cariboo.
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