In the beginning was the word, and the word was written. Some people have described distance education as the use of print or electronic communications media to deliver instruction when teachers and learners are separated in place and/or time(Eastmond, 1995, qtd. in Kerka). Others emphasize distance learning over education, defining it as getting people - and often video images of people - into the same electronic space so they can help one another learn (Filipczak, 1995, p. 111 qtd in Kerka), or a system and process that connects learners with distributed resources (Filipczak, p. 113). These last two definitions tend to center on the learner and give the learner more control. Given that the teacher evaluation in the state of Texas is now looking toward Learner centered education, this will be the emphasis of this research, that distance learning is a system which connects people in order to obtain information or education. In the past if someone wanted to learn anything at a distance from the one who was teaching, they studied by correspondence. These correspondence courses now may be referred to as snail mail. The development of new technologies has greatly changed the way that distance instruction is delivered. First, we had such media as audiotape, videotape, radio, and television. Now we must include satellite transmission, computers, the internet, and the World Wide Web as means by which we may learn by distance education. This early use of correspondence courses was limited mostly to adults who wanted to further their education and lacked only the time or the means to attend classes; therefore, they sent away for educational opportunities and continued their education by mail. Not only have we moved on through technology to video and computers, but the age of our distance learning students is getting younger. The majority of people using distance learning is still the college age students. My own...
