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Distance education is a method of teaching in which the students are not required to be physically present at a specific location or time during the term. Instead, teachers and students communicate by exchanging printed or electronic media, or through technology that allows them to communicate in real time. Physical presence is normally optional for tutorials and normally only mandatory for examinations.
Most often, regular mail is used to send written material, videos, audiotapes, and CD-ROMs to the student and to turn in the exercises. E-mail, the Web, and video conferencing over broadband network connections are used as well. In some countries, the material is supplemented by television and radio programming. To compete with the conventional sector, course material must be of very high quality and completeness, and will use modern technologies such as educational animation.
Full time or part-time study is possible, but most students choose part-time study. Research study is possible as well. Distance education is offered at all levels, but is most frequently an option for university-level studies. A form of educational program which is similar to this but which requires some amount of presence during the year is a low-residency program.
Distance education programs are sometimes called correspondence courses, an older term that originated in nineteenth-century vocational education programs that were conducted through postal mail. This term has been largely replaced by distance education, and expanded to encompass more sophisticated technologies. The first subject taught by correspondence was the Pitman Shorthand, a tool of stenography. Primary and secondary education programs were also widely available by correspondence, usually for children living in remote areas.
One of the oldest distance education universities is the University of South Africa, which has been offering DE courses since 1946. The largest distance education university in the United Kingdom is the Open University founded 1969. In Germany the FernUniversität in Hagen was founded 1974. There are now many similar institutions around the world and these are listed below.
There are many private and public, non-profit and for-profit institutions offering courses and degree programs through distance education. Levels of accreditation vary; some institutions offering distance education in the United States have received little outside oversight, and some may be fraudulent diploma mills. In many other jurisdictions, an insitution may not use the term "University" without accreditation and authorisation, normally by the national government.
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Caution Some organisations decribing themselves as Distance Education institutions are nothing of the sort and their actions may bring the sector into disrepute. Refer to Diploma mills and List of unaccredited institutions of higher learning.
Universities which have comprehensive distance education programs:
University of New England, Australia
In Distance Education students may not be required to be present in a classroom, but that also maybe a question of option.For example in the Open Universities in India, especially in the National Open University;week end contact sessions are held.These are optional, but for certain courses which have practical components such as those for computers, attendance to the tune of about 90% is compulsory.The National Open University in India is based on the United Kingdom Open University, model.As for an electronic classroom, it may or not be a part of a distance education set up. Electronic classrooms can be both on campus, and off campus. We would call such institutions as using a ' flexible' delivery mode.
Distance Education will also use all forms of technology starting with the print to the computer.This range will include the radio, the television, audio video conferencing, computer aided instruction, e learning, on line learning et al. E learning and online learning will be largely synonymous, but we can say that broadly speaking; e learning contains online/internet learning.A distinction is also made between open learning and distance learning, though generally speaking these two expressions are used interchangeably. To clarify our thinking we can say;that while ' open' education is the system, ie school or university, distance education is the teaching methodology used in these respective systems ie:school education, or higher education, as the case maybe.
Ananya.S.Guha Indira Gandhi National Open University, Shillong,INDIA:17.12.05.
Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, attitudes as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge and relates to specific useful skills. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at technical colleges or polytechnics. Today it is often referred to as professional development.
Sporting training appears more mechanistic: planned suites of regimes develop specific skills or muscles with a view to peaking at a particular time. A specialized field of training often used in sports is autogenic training.
Training & Development is the field concerned with workplace learning to improve performance.
In military use, training means gaining the physical ability to perform and survive in combat, and learning the many skills needed in a time of war. These include how to use a variety of weapons, outdoor survival skills, and how to survive capture by the enemy, among others.
It can include specialties, such as parachuting, flying an airplane, SCUBA diving, operating high-tech weapons, intelligence gathering, navigating at sea, and many others.
Once the desired abilities have been learned, on-going training means to drill and keep in shape in case of deployment orders (i.e. the same as exercise, only it's for military units).