Jaison Williams asked whether Distance Ed and eLearning are the same animal going by two different names. While they overlap, the two are certainly different in spirit.

Distance Education has roots in the academic community and tends to focus on offering a subject without the physical presence of an instructor.

eLearning springs from the convergence of corporate training and eBusiness. Its target is competence, not subject-matter mastery.

The goal of eLearning is to “reinvent learning” via personalization, 24/7 & easy access, and by providing a mix of options for meeting one’s objectives.

Distance Education offerings are patterned after on-campus courses; it often takes a semester to complete a course. With eLearning, the ideal is to attain competence in the shortest time possible (which is rarely a semester). eLearning yearns to obliterate courses and deliver only the bits and pieces of learning the learner needs.

In sum, Distance Ed tends to be academic, eLearning veers toward pragmatic. Beyond that, both may be synchronous, asynchronous, networked, multimedia, interactive, yada, yada, yada.

Anyone who wants to pursue this will find several hundred sources, white papers, newsfeeds, and opinions about eLearning at www.meta-time.com.

All the best!

jay

Jay Cross
Internet Time Group