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 through an online school. A distance learning program can either be completely a remote learning, or a combination of both online learning and traditional in-person classroom instruction. Other modalities include distance learning with complementary virtual environment or teaching in virtual environment (e-learning).
A learning object is "a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective". The term is credited to Wayne Hodgins, and dates from a working group in 1994 bearing the name. The concept encompassed by 'Learning Objects' is known by numerous other terms, including: content objects, chunks, educational objects, information objects, intelligent objects, knowledge bits, knowledge objects, learning components, media objects, reusable curriculum components, nuggets, reusable information objects, reusable learning objects, testable reusable units of cognition, training components, and units of learning.
Instructional design (ID), also known as instructional systems design and originally known as instructional systems development (ISD), is the practice of systematically designing, developing and delivering instructional materials and experiences, both digital and physical, in a consistent and reliable fashion toward an efficient, effective, appealing, engaging and inspiring acquisition of knowledge. The process consists broadly of determining the state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some "intervention" to assist in the transition. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. There are many instructional design models, but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five phases: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.
Educational technology is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, "EdTech", it often refers to the industry of companies that create educational technology. In EdTech Inc.: Selling, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in the Digital Age, Tanner Mirrlees and Shahid Alvi (2019) argue "EdTech is no exception to industry ownership and market rules" and "define the EdTech industries as all the privately owned companies currently involved in the financing, production and distribution of commercial hardware, software, cultural goods, services and platforms for the educational market with the goal of turning a profit. Many of these companies are US-based and rapidly expanding into educational markets across North America, and increasingly growing all over the world."
An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking. Edublogs proliferated when blogging architecture became more simplified and teachers perceived the instructional potential of blogs as an online resource. The use of blogs has become popular in education institutions including public schools and colleges. Blogs can be useful tools for sharing information and tips among co-workers, providing information for students, or keeping in contact with parents. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Educators who blog are sometimes called edubloggers.
David A. Wiley is an American academic, writer who is the chief academic officer of Lumen Learning, education fellow at Creative Commons, and former adjunct faculty of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, where he was previously an associate professor. Wiley's work on open content, open educational resources, and informal online learning communities has been reported in many international outlets, including The New York Times, The Hindu, MIT Technology Review, and Wired.
Linda Marie Harasim, is a "leading teacher, scholar and speaker on the theories and practices of online education, contributing knowledge, technologies, and practices to the field of technology-enabled learning," is a pioneer leading theorist of online education. She is a professor emerita in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her six books and hundreds of articles about Computer-supported collaborative learning have been acknowledged as seminal works in the field.
George Siemens is a Canadian expatriate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington and professor and director of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning at the University of South Australia. He is known for his theory of connectivism, which seeks to understand learning in the digital age. He played a role in the early development of massive online open courses (MOOCs).
James Nicholas Farmer is founder and CEO of Incsub, which includes the WordPress related companies of WPMU DEV, WPMU.org, and Edublogs.org, the largest global weblog community for educators. Farmer is currently based in Australia, where he has been the Online Community Editor of The Age, and Lecturer in Education Design at Deakin University. Farmer's blog, Incorporated Subversion, has been a resource for educators involved with social media and online publishing since 2003.
Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open education broadens access to the learning and training traditionally offered through formal education systems and is typically offered through online and distance education. The qualifier "open" refers to the elimination of barriers that can preclude both opportunities and recognition for participation in institution-based learning. One aspect of openness or "opening up" education is the development and adoption of open educational resources in support of open educational practices.
Connectivism is a theoretical framework for understanding learning in a digital age. It emphasizes how internet technologies such as web browsers, search engines, wikis, online discussion forums, and social networks contributed to new avenues of learning. Technologies have enabled people to learn and share information across the World Wide Web and among themselves in ways that were not possible before the digital age. Learning does not simply happen within an individual, but within and across the networks.
Edupunk is a do it yourself (DIY) attitude to teaching and learning practices. Tom Kuntz described edupunk as "an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like PowerPoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and DIY ethos of ’70s bands like The Clash to the classroom." Many instructional applications can be described as DIY education or edupunk.
The term microlecture is not used here to refer to microcontent for microlearning, but to actual instructional content that is formatted for online and mobile learning using a constructivist approach. More specifically, as described in the Chronicle of Higher Education, these are approximately 60 second presentations with a specific structure. They are not just brief presentations: although Dr. McGrew had success with "one minute lectures" at the University of Northern Iowa as did Dr. Kee at the University of Leeds.
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a system specifically designed to facilitate the management of educational courses by teachers for their students. It predominantly relies on computer hardware and software, enabling distance learning. In North America, this concept is commonly denoted as a "Learning Management System" (LMS).
The Australian College of Educators (ACE) is an Australian national professional association for educators. Membership is open to all professional educators working in the early childhood, school, and tertiary education sectors, as well as to education researchers and managers. The college advocates for its members in seeking improvements in the status of the education profession.
A massive open online course or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012, a year called the "Year of the MOOC".
Digital learning is learning that is supported by technology. It encompasses any type of learning that is accompanied by technology or by instructional practice that makes effective use of technology. It includes a wide array of practices, including blended and virtual learning.
The Buntine Oration is a biennial invited presentation and speech made at the conference of the Australian College of Educators (ACE). It was established in 1960 by the four children of Dr Walter Murray Buntine who survived him – Dr R. M. Buntine, Dr M. A. Buntine, Dr R. D. Buntine, and Mrs. D. M. G. Wilson – in his memory. The inaugural oration was given by Peter Karmel in 1962 at the third annual ACE conference and the most recent was in 2008.
Michael J. Hannafin was an American professor and academic known for his work in educational technology. He was a professor at the University of Georgia in the educational psychology department and director of the Learning and Performance Support Lab. He was once editor-in-chief of the journal Educational Technology Research and Development.
Open educational resources in Canada are the various initiatives related to open education, open educational resources (OER), open pedagogies (OEP), open educational practices (OEP), and open scholarship that are established nationally and provincially across Canadian K-12 and higher education sectors, and where Canadian based inititatives extend to international collaborations.
