Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at 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. Distance education is a technology-mediated modality and has evolved with the evolution of technologies such as video conferencing, TV, and the Internet. 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).
Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors.
Athabasca University (AU) is a Canadian public research university that primarily operates through online distance education. Founded in 1970, it is one of four comprehensive academic and research universities in Alberta, and was the first Canadian university to specialize in distance education.
TAFE NSW is an Australian vocational education and training provider. Annually, the network trains over 500,000 students in campus, workplace, online, or distance education methods of education. It was established as an independent statutory body under the TAFE Commission Act 1990. The Minister for Regional Development, Skills and Small Business is responsible for TAFE NSW.
School of the Air is a generic term for correspondence schools catering for the primary and early secondary education of children in remote and outback Australia where some or all classes were historically conducted by radio, although this is now replaced by telephone and internet technology. In these areas, the school-age population is too small for a conventional school to be viable.
In Australia and New Zealand, a cattle station is a large farm, the main activity of which is the rearing of cattle. The owner of a cattle station is called a grazier. The largest cattle station in the world is Anna Creek Station in South Australia, which covers an area of 23,677 square kilometres.
Originally conceived in 1989, the Constable Care Child Safety Foundation is a not for profit community organisation working in partnership with the Western Australia Police, to educate children and young people in primary and secondary schools across the State about personal safety, crime prevention, ethics and good decision making. Constable Care is a nationally registered harm prevention charity and utilises a range of educational approaches to engage and empower young people, including theatre-in-education and applied theatre, technology and film based content.
Salisbury High School is a secondary public school located in Farley Grove, Salisbury North, South Australia, Australia. In 2005, it became an IB World School and it retained this status in an evaluation in 2010. In 2016, Salisbury High converted back to an Australian Curriculum school to focus on improving areas such as STEM and Arts.
Iona Presentation College is an independent Catholic early learning, primary and secondary school. It is located in Mosman Park, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia.
NSW School of Languages is a public specialist coeducation secondary school, with speciality in teaching languages via distance education, located in West Street, Petersham, an inner-western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
The Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) is a government owned tertiary education institution with three campuses: Hawke’s Bay, Auckland, and Gisborne, New Zealand. It is also referred to as EIT Hawke's Bay, EIT Tairāwhiti, and EIT Auckland. EIT serves as the main regional higher education centre for the Hawke's Bay and Gisborne regions.
Remote laboratory is the use of telecommunications to remotely conduct real experiments, at the physical location of the operating technology, whilst the scientist is utilizing technology from a separate geographical location. Remote laboratory comprehends one or more remote experiments.
Our Rural Magazine was a monthly magazine produced between 1926 and 1946 by the WA Correspondence School of the Education Department of Western Australia for school children who were located in isolated circumstances. In the inter-war period, many isolated rural localities did not have primary schools, and the students were required to have their education by correspondence.
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.
Manunda is a suburb of Cairns in the Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Manunda had a population of 5,390 people.
The Alice Springs School of the Air is a distance education organization based in Alice Springs which provides teaching, education materials and personal communication for remote children in the Northern Territory outback of Australia.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected educational systems across the world. The number of cases of COVID-19 started to rise in March 2020 and many educational institutions and universities closed. Most countries decided to temporarily close educational institutions in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. UNESCO estimates that at the height of the closures in April 2020, national educational shutdowns affected nearly 1.6 billion students in 200 countries: 94% of the student population and one-fifth of the global population. Closures are estimated to have lasted for an average of 41 weeks. They have had significant negative effects on student learning, which are predicted to have substantial long-term implications for both education and earnings. During the pandemic, education budgets and official aid program budgets for education have decreased.
In Australia, homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular. It is legal in all Australian states and territories, with each having its own regulations around the practice. Distance education is also prevalent for Australians who live in remote, rural areas. There are more than a dozen universities in Australia that support distance education for tertiary studies. Some Australians switch between distance education and classroom teaching. The number of homeschooled children and students who take distance education in Australia is approximately 30,000. The number of registered homeschoolers alone was 21,437 in 2019; this corresponds to 0.5 per cent of the total school population of Australia. In the 2010s, the average growth rate of the practice amounted to 9.4 per cent per year. The largest Christian school of distance education in Australia is the Australian Christian College, which has over 1,700 families with 4,000 students enrolled. Homeschooling generally enjoys a very good reputation in the Australian media and is widely seen as a flexible alternative form of education with good socialization opportunities in the community.
