history of online learning in higher education

Three Centuries of Distance Learning

We will probably remember 2020 as the time when distance education exploded. But the infrastructure that enabled this expansion was years in the making.

These days students, teachers, professors, and parents are figuring out an awful lot about how distance learning works. But teaching and learning remotely is not a brand-new thing . As microbiologist Roy D. Sleator writes, it’s actually much older than Zoom, Google Classroom, or even the internet itself.

Sleator begins the history of distance learning in 1728. That’s when shorthand teacher Caleb Phillips bought an ad in the Boston Gazette promising that students “may by having the several lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston.”

Despite Phillips’s forward thinking, Sleator writes, correspondence courses didn’t really catch on until the nineteenth century, when improvements to the postal service made them practical. The Pittman Shorthand program, established in Cincinnati in 1852, allowed students to mail in their work and, upon successful completion of the course, receive a certificate of expertise.

While clerical skills might seem like a natural for classes conducted through the mail, would-be secretaries weren’t the only ones to turn to correspondence courses. In 1890, the Colliery School of Mines created a correspondence course on mine safety. Over the three decades that followed, it evolved into the International Correspondence School, which offered courses by mail for iron and railroad workers as well as miners. By 1923, it had 2.5 million students.

But by that time, Sleator writes, mail was losing its place as the dominant method of long-distance communication. Live radio shows allowed educators to talk directly to students at home, even if the broadcast only went one way. By 1923, more than 10 percent of broadcast radio stations were owned by educational institutions.

And then, of course, there was television. By 1934, the University of Iowa was broadcasting televised courses. Other colleges followed suit.

Sleator writes that in the 1960s the Carnegie Foundation funded work by Charles Wedemeyer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison to figure out how to best reach students at a distance. This became the Articulated Instructional Media Project (AIM), which inspired the British Open University, established in 1969. Similar open universities, using radio and TV technologies, popped up in other countries, including Spain and Canada.

Back in the United States in the 1980s, the National Technological University started using satellite TV to deliver a combination of live and recorded course material. It also let students call their instructors by phone and get questions answered on air in real time.

Soon after that came the technology we associate with distance learning today—the World Wide Web. Jones International University, the first completely internet-based higher education institution accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, opened in 1993. It offered five bachelor’s and twenty-four master’s degree programs.

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From there, it wasn’t long until the rise of commercial online learning services like Blackboard and the adoption of “e-learning” across colleges and for some high school students as well.

In the decade since Sleator’s article was published, interest in distance learning has expanded. But that expansion surely pales in comparison with what’s happened just this spring.

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A History of Online Education

Evan Thompson

Contributing Writer

Learn about our editorial process .

Updated October 17, 2023 · 3 Min Read

The technology boom of the mid-1980s is most remembered for the first personal computer, but that era also saw another important creation: online learning.

Back then, it was sparsely used, mostly by business executives and a few postsecondary institutions. But today, it's become a cornerstone of education – and it preserved school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technological advancements have made online education accessible to people worldwide of all different backgrounds. The format is especially popular in the U.S., where about a third of the 20.6 million college students take online classes. Nearly every postsecondary institution in the U.S. offers at least one online program, ranging from non-degree degree programs to full Ph.Ds .

The history of online learning in higher education can sometimes seem too big to wrap your mind around, much like the internet itself, so we've put together a timeline to help you better understand the origins of today's online colleges and degrees.

A Brief Timeline of Online Education

— 1982.

The Western Behavioral Sciences Institute uses computer conferencing to provide a distance education program for business executives.

— 1983

Ron Gordon, Atari's former president, launches the Electronic University Network to make online courses available for people with access to personal computers.

— 1985

Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale-Davie, Florida, creates the first electronic classroom through an accredited online graduate program.

— 1986

The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) launches the first open computer network — a precursor to the internet — allowing institutions to create and distribute electronic information.

— 1993

Jones International University opens in Centennial, Colorado, becoming the first fully web-based , accredited university.

— 1994

CALCampus introduces the first online-only curriculum with real-time instruction and participation — i.e., synchronous learning .

— 1995

Nineteen U.S. governors found Western Governors University to help Western states maximize educational resources through distance learning.

— 1998

California Virtual University — a consortium of California colleges offering around 700 online classes — opens.

The "Boom" of Distance Education

Percent of students taking distance education classes

— 2002

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launches the OpenCourseWare Project to provide free MIT courses to people worldwide.

— 2012

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a free online course resource, becomes available through Udacity and enables learners to take classes asynchronously at their own pace.

— 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic forces nearly every college and university to switch to online learning rather than hold classes in person.

Popular Online Programs

Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.

Evan Thompson is a Washington-based writer for TBS covering higher education. He has bylines in the Seattle Times, Tacoma News Tribune, Everett Herald, and others from his past life as a newspaper reporter.

Header Image Credit: Ariel Skelley, Vince Streano | Getty Images

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The History of Online Schooling

Though it may seem that online education had its beginnings in the late 1900s, the concept of distance learning first came into practice in the mid 19th century when the U.S. Postal Service was developed. The notion of reliable, long-distance correspondence led to the development and implementation of what were called commercial ‘correspondence colleges’, where instructional missives would be distributed through the postal service between students and professors. Today, at-distance education programs have become more sophisticated and accessible due to the proliferation of the web and digital technology. Elite institutions around the world now offer open courseware, online degrees, and online classes that are both legitimizing and popularizing the idea of education from a computer.

A few significant advancements have shaped and pushed distance learning forward since the late 1800s. In 1873 the the first official correspondence education program, called the “Society to Encourage Home Studies”, was established in Boston, Massachusetts by Ana Eliot Ticknor. The University of Queensland in Australia founded its Department of Correspondence Studies in 1911, which also relied on Australia’s postal system. The University of South Africa, today known as one of the world’s open distance learning mega colleges, became a champion and innovator of distance learning when it reshaped its mission and focus in 1946.

In 1953 the University of House made distance learning history when it began offering the first televised college classes on KUHT (today called HoustonPBS), which was the first public television station in the United States. Referring to itself as the “The Channel That Changes You”, KUHT ran 13-5 hours of educational material each week, accounting for approximately 38% of the channel’s total broadcast time. Many of the courses aired in the evening so that learners who worked during the day had time to view the material.

After the television, the personal computer and the personal web were the next major inventions to revolutionize distance education. In 1989 the University of Phoenix became the first institution to launch a fully online collegiate institution that offered both bachelors and masters degrees. In 1996, entrepreneurs Glen Jones and Bernand Luskin launched Jones International University, which became the first accredited and fully web-based university. Since the creation of these fully online programs and schools, distance learning has continued to grow in many different directions. In 2003 the Blackboard Learning System staff announced that 40,000 instructors were teaching 150,000 online courses to more than 6 million students, across 55 countries.

Today it is estimated that 1 out of 4 college students are enrolled in at least one online classes. In 2009 there were over 4.5 million students taking online classes, with a Master of Science in Business Administration (MBA) being the top degree offered in the United States. This trend seems like to continue into the future: currently, 83% of all U.S. institutions that offer online courses say they expect an increase in online enrollment in the coming decade.

The growth of distance learning programs has many important side-effects on higher education. For example, the profile of a typical undergraduate student has changed significantly. The average age of students enrolled at the University of Phoenix is around 33, and more than 50% of all students taking online classes are currently female. Online education has also spurred changes in traditional colleges: now, 93% of all brick and mortar colleges offer online courses. An increasing number of universities, like the University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offer free online classes called open courseware that feature video lectures and quizzes taken directly from class discussion.

As technology improves and online programs become respected, education experts predict that the distance education will continue to expand and complexify in the future. Some leaders in the realm predict that the number of online students will grown to almost 19 million by 2014. To encourage this, President Barack Oabama has pledged over $500 million for the creation of new online course materials to fuel the industry.

Further Studies

If you want to play a role in the growing field of online education, the study of computer science can provide you with a strong foundation in the technical and theoretical aspects of computer technology, giving you the skills you need to create innovative tools for distance learners. However, if you are interested in the business aspects of running a profitable online college, a degree in business administration will teach you about the different elements that go into running a successful company, from marketing and management to finance and accounting. Finally, if you want to help make distance learning programs more effective, you can learn about methods and theories for creating quality instruction by enrolling in an education or instructional psychology degree program.

Embrace the convenience of online learning and shape your own path to success.

Explore schools offering programs and courses tailored to your interests, and start your learning journey today.

A Decade of Innovation: Online Learning at Harvard

Published march 6, 2024.

“The pandemic accelerated the adoption of online learning and its impact will likely continue to shape higher education for many years to come.”—Catherine Breen, Managing Director for Harvard Online.

At Harvard Online, increasing access to education is our purpose. We are committed to positively impacting learners, wherever they may live, by making a Harvard-quality education available to anyone with an internet connection. 

Meeting this purpose requires a firm grasp on current innovations with eyes fixed on what comes next. At Harvard Online, we are always asking, “What does the future look like for teaching and learning?”

A Brief History of Online Learning at Harvard

The Harvard Online brand launched in 2022 as part of the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL) , a multifunctional department that works across all of Harvard's 12 schools and has been furthering Harvard’s vision for online learning for more than a decade.

In 2012, Harvard, in partnership with MIT, launched the innovative platform edX to leverage the global connectivity of the internet to translate the University’s world-renowned education into new and widely accessible formats. An emergent learning modality, massive open online courses (or MOOCs ), provided the opportunity to do just that.

True to their name, MOOCs are freely accessible to anyone with an internet-connected computer, allowing learners of diverse backgrounds from around the globe to experience the expertise of Harvard faculty. The original Harvard courses developed for the edX platform revolutionized online learning and confirmed Harvard as a leader in innovative pedagogical technologies.

Online Learning, A Solution in a Crisis

Harvard’s command of online learning became a critical asset for the University when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. When Harvard’s President Larry Bacow announced in-person classes would be suspended for the spring semester in March 2020, the entire University had to shift to a model of remote learning to limit the spread of coronavirus. 

By this time, VPAL already had years of experience in creating online courses and was uniquely positioned to provide its expertise and advice during this transition.  

Not only could online learning serve as an alternative to in-person classes in a time of crisis, it could also be leveraged to disseminate vital information to medical professionals serving communities around the world, best showcased in our Mechanical Ventilation for COVID-19 course. 

Throughout the period of online learning necessitated by the pandemic, it became clear that VPAL’s contributions to the future of education and online learning made a larger impact, at Harvard and beyond, than what was originally imagined. What had started as a means of opening the (virtual) doors to a Harvard education for a global audience became the saving grace of the core educational mission of the University for over a year of online learning. During that period of forced innovation, Harvard experimented with new teaching formats and technologies, and pushed the boundaries of what we thought we could achieve with an online classroom.

In January 2021, VPAL launched its first certification courses in partnership with Harvard Business School Online. Aimed at professionals and organizations, these advanced online courses leveraged the cutting-edge technology of the HBSO platform and case study method to diversify the offerings of Harvard to a global online audience.

After a thorough study of best practices and Covid-era innovations, VPAL was positioned to lead the University into the next phase of online learning. In early 2022, the Harvard Online was introduced to encapsulate and expand upon VPAL’s original values and mission, bringing together courses from multiple online learning platforms, including edX and HBSO, in an expanded repertoire with thoughtful curation around themes including health care leadership and digital futures. 

As of February 2024, Harvard Online proudly offers 132 courses with over 25 million learners who have earned 504,337 certificates—and counting!

Looking Ahead

With eyes always on the horizon, the Harvard Online team is committed to executing the vision of the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, expanding our course offerings with innovative formats, engaging a global community of learners, and shaping the future of education by leveraging the latest research and technology. 

For instance, the advent of generative AI promises a paradigm shift in the educational framework, and Harvard Online is poised to lead the way. Most recently, our colleagues at the Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching (HILT) hosted their annual conference Teaching in the Age of AI: Nurturing Connection and Empowering Learners , and it inspired us to think about the value of expert-led conversation in delineating complex and broad topics.

We have the fortunate position of being able to connect with many experts at the forefront of the future of online learning. What better way to see where we’re going than to ask them? 

In our next blog post in this series, we speak with Catherine Breen , Managing Director of VPAL, on her observations from recent years of online education and what the future holds for Harvard Online.

The history of online learning and Harvard Online are just one small part of our story. To learn more about our wide array of online courses and how to enroll, check out our Course page .

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With Online Learning, ‘Let’s Take a Breath and See What Worked and Didn’t Work’

The massive expansion of online higher education created a worldwide laboratory to finally assess its value and its future.

By Jon Marcus

This article is part of our Learning special report about how the pandemic has continued to change how we approach education.

Kameshwari Shankar watched for years as college and university courses were increasingly taught online instead of face to face, but without a definitive way of understanding which students benefited the most from them, or what if anything they learned.

As an associate professor of economics at City College in New York, Dr. Shankar knew that one of the most important requirements of scientific research was often missing from studies of the effectiveness of online higher education: a control group.

Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing almost everyone on earth online and creating a randomized trial on a planetary scale with a control group so big, it was a researcher’s wildest dream.

“The pandemic and the lockdown — that’s a great natural experiment,” said Dr. Shankar. A study she co-authored called it “a gold mine of evidence.”

Now the results of this experiment are starting to come in. They suggest that online higher education may work better than prepandemic research suggested, and that it is evolving decisively toward a combination of in-person and online, or “blended,” classes.

“For two years we’ve had sort of a petri dish of experimenting with learning online,” said Anant Agarwal, chief platform officer of the online program management company 2U and former CEO of edX, the online provider created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard and sold last year to 2U for $800 million. “Now people are sitting down and saying, ‘Let’s take a breath. Let’s see what worked and didn’t work.’ ”

About a third of higher education was entirely online before the pandemic, and the rest continued to be delivered face to face in brick-and-mortar classrooms, according to the research company Bay View Analytics. The huge spike that occurred during the peak of lockdowns propelled not only unprecedented innovation and investment in online higher education, but also a spree of research into whether and how well it works.

“Initially when we were doing that research it was always on the class or the course level and very rarely were you able to see how online education worked across programs and across institutions,” never mind across the world, said Michael Brown, assistant professor of higher education and student affairs at the Iowa State University School of Education.

Scholars have the same chance to study how kindergartners through 12th graders fared online, though the results will take longer to see than they will for older students, said Carla Johnson, a professor of science education at North Carolina State University and co-author of a study underwritten by the U.S. Department of Education that reviewed all of the pre-existing research about this.

That earlier research largely found that primary- and secondary-school students who learned online before Covid — largely in rural and online charter schools — did less well in math and reading than their counterparts in brick-and-mortar classrooms. Based on this, Dr. Johnson and her colleagues suggested better teacher training , more equitable access to technology and more support for students to help them work independently.

As for how K-12 students did when almost everyone moved online, however, she said, “you’re looking at three to five years in terms of being able to measure academic impact” as they progress into subsequent grades and take standardized tests.

“There are a lot of people who are really interested in that and there are a lot of people investigating it,” Dr. Johnson said.

Online Research Grew

At this year’s meeting of the American Educational Research Association, 236 papers were presented with the word “online” in their titles, compared to 158 the year before the pandemic — a nearly 50 percent increase. Felice Levine, the association’s executive director, likened these projects to the real-time, rapid-response studies of the impact of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

“This is action research on steroids!” a university administrator enthused anonymously in a survey, referring to a type of scholarship that examines an activity in progress.

Just as with studies of the effectiveness of online education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, much of the prepandemic research into online higher education concluded that students in online programs did worse than students in in-person courses. On average, they had lower grades, higher dropout rates and poorer performance in subsequent classes. Outcomes were especially bad for men, Black students and students who had fared poorly in their earlier educations.

But many of these studies suffered from what scholars describe as self-selection bias, said Dr. Shankar — in this case, the fact that people who chose to take courses online also shared other inherent characteristics, skewing the results. Students who enrolled in online higher education programs before Covid tended to be older and studying part time, for instance, and often had jobs and families. “We would expect a part-time student with other obligations to perform less well,” Dr. Shankar said.

During the pandemic, the variety of students learning online “absolutely increased,” said Di Xu, an associate professor of higher education and public policy at the University of California, Irvine, who began doing research into online learning before Covid. That makes it easier to objectively determine “who seems to benefit and who struggles the most,” Professor Xu said.

Dr. Shankar and others have been combing through the massive amounts of newer information generated during the pandemic, when learning online was largely no longer a choice, eliminating self-selection bias. “We are optimistic that the post-pandemic data will show more favorable outcomes,” she said.

Already, in surveys conducted at City College, Dr. Shankar and her co-authors have found that online instruction appears particularly effective in large introductory classes with 100 or more students, since those students can use chats and virtual feedback to raise questions they aren’t able to ask in giant, impersonal lecture halls.

Students in small elective classes like it less, saying there is too little opportunity for face-to-face discussion.

Graduations Sped Up

Another study has found that providing required courses online helps students graduate more quickly , often because in-person versions of the courses are full or unavailable.

Students in general are also at least somewhat more interested in learning online now than they were before the pandemic. That’s the consensus of roughly 75 percent of university chief online officers in the Changing Landscape of Online Education, or CHLOE, survey by the nonprofit Quality Matters and the higher education consulting firm Eduventures. College and university students will all now be online for at least part of their educations, these administrators almost unanimously say.

Not everyone loved online learning during the pandemic — especially in the early stages, when it was at its most haphazard. Nearly three in 10 students in a Strada Education survey in the fall of 2020 said their ability to learn was much worse online than in person.

Even now, acceptance is lukewarm, emerging research shows.

Only about a third of Americans say they are “probably” or “definitely” confident about the quality of online courses , another Strada survey found. Forty-seven percent of students and 43 percent of faculty members give online education an A for meeting their educational needs, according to Bay View Analytics.

But 57 percent of students are more optimistic about classes that are entirely online than they were before Covid. Nearly 99 percent of the university chief online officers in the CHLOE survey expect an increase in online instruction , up from 70 percent who expected one before Covid .

As for faculty, even if only 43 percent give a top grade to online higher education, in Mr. Agarwal’s opinion, that’s a win. “Really what happened during the pandemic is people tried it for the first time and many of them liked it,” he said. That has resulted in “a much bigger leap than in the normal course of evolution.”

Another thing that’s taken a big leap is blended learning, combining such things as short videos and frequent, computer-graded tests with in-person classroom lectures and discussion. Though it’s been practiced for a while, there’s now widespread consensus that online higher education, at least for undergraduates, will largely take this form.

“What we have now is an unprecedented agreement about the direction of higher education, in terms of teaching mode, that we have never seen before,” said Jeff Seaman, director of Bay View Analytics, who has tracked this field since 2003.

Faculty Favored Hybrid Classes

By last year, more than half of all faculty said they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they wanted to combine online with face-to-face instruction , a Bay View Analytics survey found. A Harvard University task force found that 82 percent of faculty there were interested in adding digital tools they adopted while teaching remotely to their in-person classes.

That number likely includes many faculty who, before the pandemic, stuck to fully in-person teaching, Professor Brown, of Iowa State, said. “Then this terrible thing happened that forced people to try online education who would have probably resisted it for another decade. If there is a takeaway that’s clear now, it’s that the shift in teaching culture has opened folks up to technology more.”

Mr. Agarwal said the pandemic also exposed bad practices, such as online-only classes that consisted almost exclusively of very long lectures.

“The world has not gone back to zero, but has settled somewhere in the middle where we’re coming into a blended future,” he said.

More than four out of five institutions built up their technical teams during the pandemic to support online learning, and are offering more faculty training programs in it, the CHLOE survey found — an infrastructure that will likely stick around.

Some scholars caution that the unprecedented nature of the pandemic could complicate research as much as self-selection bias did before it started. Faculty and students had to juggle outside stress, for instance.

“You have all of these factors going on with the pandemic affecting everything from personal health to family members’ health to employment,” said Cassandra Hart, an associate professor of education policy at the University of California, Davis, who is studying the effect of the pandemic on higher education.

Added Professor Xu: “The shift to remote instruction because of the pandemic was accompanied by so many other things that changed at the same time. It’s really difficult to tease out the impact of instruction.”

Online higher education also took so many forms — from professors lecturing over Zoom to sophisticated multimedia courses developed by professional instructional designers — that it’s hard to generalize about.

“The variability is massive,” Mr. Seaman said. “I just see too many people lumping all of this stuff together, and you can’t do that.”

But Dr. Shankar said all of those varieties of online learning offer more, not less, opportunity for study. “That would be another gold mine of evidence,” she said: “not just online versus traditional, but also within online what works and what doesn’t.

One finding that has emerged from the pandemic could have the greatest effect of all on online higher education: Nearly half of employers said their opinion of the quality of online credentials has improved, according to a survey by the Northeastern University Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy. Still, since so many students who participated in it haven’t yet applied for jobs or even graduated, conclusively measuring the effectiveness of online learning will take time. The academic semester now underway, researchers say, is a first test of new methods and acceptance.

“It’s going to take years for us to really be able to see, out of the things coming out of the pandemic, what works well, what works well in some settings and what works well for some students and not for others,” Professor Hart said.

Jon Marcus has written about higher education for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, US News, and The Boston Globe, among others. He is a higher education editor at The Hechinger Report and has been North America correspondent for The Times (U.K.) Higher Education Magazine, and former editor in chief of Boston Magazine.

An earlier version of this article misstated the title that Kameshwari Shankar holds at City University of New York. It is associate professor, not assistant professor.

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• Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

• Barbara B. Lockee 1  

Nature Electronics volume  4 ,  pages 5–6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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The Sage Handbook of Online Higher Education

• Safary Wa-Mbaleka - Bethel University
• Kelvin Thompson - University of Louisville
• Leni Casimiro - Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies
• Description

The SAGE Handbook of Online Higher Education  presents a cutting-edge collection of 50 essays that explores the rapidly evolving landscape of online teaching and learning in higher education. Assembled and contributed by a team of leading experts, the Handbook adopts a uniquely holistic approach to examining the needs of online education.

Chapters bring together voices from diverse and international backgrounds to provide insights applicable to a broad range of contexts, and present practical strategies for planning, delivering quality online higher education. The handbook covers a wide range of topics, including online pedagogy, instructional design, student engagement, technological innovation, assessment, leadership, and the developing role of online education in the context of broader societal and cultural shifts.

The SAGE Handbook of Online Higher Education  is an essential resource for educators, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who seek to understand and shape the future of higher education in the digital age.

Section 1: Fundamentals of Online Education

Section 2: Online Education Around the World

Section 3: Online Instructional Design

Section 4: Online Instructional Delivery

Section 5: Instructional Technology for Online Education

Section 6: Online Education Administration and Management

Section 7: Student Support Services

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

For assistance with your order: Please email us at [email protected] or connect with your SAGE representative.

SAGE 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 www.sagepub.com

This book should be on the reading list for all educators who care about providing a quality educational experience for their students. Written by global experts in online learning, it provides a comprehensive foundation to guide leaders, faculty and staff through the various elements that are critical to building effective online programs. It is through resources like this that we are able to provide a path forward to successful learning during normal times and continuity of learning during a crisis or natural disaster.

This resource could not have come at a more opportune time. The breath and scope of the sections and chapters capture the global sense of where online learning has been, where it is now and what the future might have in store for us. The topics covered are emergent making the handbook much more than the sum of its parts guiding us skillfully around the world, addressing online teaching and learning through the perspective design, delivery, instructional technology administration and student support. The best educational scholars across the globe have made this book a tour de force for understanding and implementing quality online learning.

This international collection of chapters on developments in online learning in higher education is timely, coming soon after the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and learning, the recent developments in new online technologies such as video streaming, social media, simulations and games, virtual reality, and the growing impact of AI tools such as ChatGPT. The chapters include a review of online learning around the world, online instructional design, online instructional delivery, instructional technology, online educational administration, and student support services. The book will be essential reading for all in higher education concerned with either teaching or administration. 

With the increasing demand for online higher education, it is essential that we have a comprehensive understanding of how to design, develop and deliver high-quality online education, lead and manage online education institutionally, and support faculty endeavors and student learning. The SAGE Handbook of Online Higher Education, which is a ground-breaking volume with contributions from more than 100 well-recognized experts of online education, is an invaluable resource for higher education educators and leadership. It systematically explores theories, frameworks, strategies and technologies for online learning design, teaching, assessment, and administration and provides eight case studies across six continents.

On behalf of the Asian distance educators, enthusiasts, and practitioners, I would like to appreciate the initiatives of the editors as well as the writers of this handbook, who have worked hard in promoting the online learning practice as the most effective mode in open and distance learning system.  This handbook is a real portrait of the online learning practice in higher education globally. Furthermore, this handbook is very insightful in terms of the coverage of the different dimensions of online education. Everyone involved or interested in offering online education must have a copy of this handbook.

In response to the pressures of the recent global pandemic, online learning has become a global imperative forcing initially reluctant institutions of higher education to start engaging with the realities and complexities of designing, developing, and implementing quality online learning which is here to stay. This useful handbook comes just in time, and will be very useful for a variety of users, supporting the various steps and processes required for the design, delivery and management of quality student-focused online learning experiences and programs. Issues regularly faced by higher education institutions are approached from a variety of global perspectives, strategies, and best practices.

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Where Online Learning Goes Next

• Leah Belsky

Why don’t more universities let people learn on their phones?

As the gatekeepers of knowledge and stewards of human capital, universities have to play a major role in preparing a skilled global workforce. Doing so will require an ecosystem-oriented mindset, using online offerings to extend reach and establish partnerships with other universities and content providers. Much like industries, universities will need digital solutions to solve for the big problems in higher education. By harnessing emerging technologies, universities can reach beyond campus walls to empower diverse learners at global scale. It begins with embracing stackable, online learning, which provides flexibility and affordability that increases access to university curricula and allows students to engage in smaller chunks of learning before committing to larger degree programs. Technology-powered formats like mobile-friendly experiences meet the learner where they are, enabling more seamless transitions for those entering a new learning environment or picking up where they left off. At a more advanced level, embracing AI-powered adaptive learning will enable universities to personalize education for millions for more effective outcomes.

Charles W. Eliot, who served as President of Harvard University for a record 40 years , charted a roadmap for education in his seminal essay, The New Education . Written in 1869, it made the case for continuously updating how and what students learn, so education could evolve in step with society. That approach remains just as relevant today, 150 years later.

• LB Leah Belsky is senior vice president of enterprise at Coursera.

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Online learning: What next for higher education after COVID-19?

Online learning could be used to revolutionize education for the good. Image:  Unsplash/Emmanuel Ikwuegbu

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• Higher education institutions worldwide faced challenges when switching to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• However, the experience highlighted how online learning could make education more engaging and accessible for many students.
• Lecturers and teachers should embrace the opportunities offered by digital distance learning to revolutionize education for the better.

Prior to the pandemic, very few students had the chance to study online. As a digital dreamer for Education 4.0 , my dream for the future of higher education had long involved a shift from the university being a physical location to a digital one – meaning you can study whenever and wherever you were.

Then COVID-19 forced higher education institutions (HEI) to move to digital distance learning all over the world. According to UNESCO , 194 countries and regions temporarily closed their educational institutions due to the pandemic, affecting more than 1.5 billion students worldwide.

But the process wasn't easy due to a range of issues including IT problems, internet access and lack of knowledge around digital teaching resources. However, with careful planning and implementation, online learning can make university education more affordable, accessible, interactive, and student-centered.

COVID-19 a 'steep learning curve' for lecturers

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Higher Education Institution study highlighted how lecturers faced a steep learning curve when adapting to new teaching technologies at the start of the pandemic.

They suddenly had to record lectures, create learning resources, organize online classrooms and hold live sessions. For some it was easy, but not for others; they learned to teach online by actively doing so due to circumstance.

Inside Higher Ed's annual report found that half of the professors surveyed agree that online learning is an " effective method of teaching " and many instructors are concerned that their engagement with students has diminished thanks to the shift to online learning.

Academic staff also reported more stress and work-related pressure , more out-of-hours work and too much bluescreen engagement.

Even so, this compassionate teaching style and the sense of solidarity between lecturers and students should be valued and nurtured throughout university teaching, online or off.

From a student's point of view, remote learning often works well, especially if we consider students’ financial and maintenance costs.

But it can also prove to be a loss, if students need face-to-face learning, to complete laboratory work, or even just have social contact on the campus.

Online learning can be more productive

During the pandemic, many academic staff realized that dividing teaching into multiple small learning activities – such as mini-lectures, group discussions, class polls and pop-up quizzes – could be more productive.

New digital skills and technology played key roles in transforming traditional classrooms into hybrid ones. However, it must be remembered that such blended teaching methods increased both working hours and stress levels in teaching staff.

As such, teaching staff should have their own autonomy to design their courses. Otherwise, universities could end up creating a blended education environment, but without the quality of education.

COVID disruption to education

Pandemic undoubtedly disrupted the whole education sector and prompted academic staff and students to change their working, learning and even living conditions.

In addition, there are concerns that the digital divide among university students has increased, due to varying access to online platforms and services.

The disruption has also had a potential financial impact. According to McKinsey & Company, global costs from pandemic-related learning delays could reach $1.6 trillion annually by 2040, or 0.9% of the world's GDP.

Technology can revolutionize learning for good

As an Innovation and Digitalization Researcher, I have observed that there is massive potential for using technology to deepen and support learning outside the classroom.

The pandemic forced us to define what engagement really means in the classroom, showing us how students could be more creative and how a creative exam assessment can take the place of a traditional one.

Regardless of where the class takes place – in person, online, or through hybrid learning – the key priorities for HEIs should remain student engagement and the learning experience.

It is important for us to acknowledge what’s happening around us and what resources are available to support student learning. Technology isn’t just a disruptor, but an enabler.

Since COVID-19, I have been effectively using a number of such tools in my classes to make the best pedagogical practices, including Moodle , Microsoft , Google Education , Screencast-O-Matic , Miro , Zoom , and H5P.

According to the Online College Students 2022 report , 87% of undergraduate and graduate online students agreed or strongly agreed that online education was worth the cost. In 2020, most likely due to COVID-19, 73% of students were considered online or partially online, compared to 33% in 2017.

Why we should embrace online learning

Undoubtedly, HEIs have learned an invaluable lesson over the past few years. Some may think that COVID-19 learning was not good enough , but it would be a shame to go back to an absolute face-to-face learning environment at the higher education level.

For at least the next couple of years, universities will have to deal with some of the toughest circumstances they have ever encountered due to COVID-19.

Yet they can also embrace the changes brought by online learning and transform higher education for the better.

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Influence of e-learning on the students’ of higher education in the digital era: A systematic literature review

• Published: 16 April 2024

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• Rashmi Singh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9195-5301 1 ,
• Shailendra Kumar Singh 1 &
• Niraj Mishra 1  

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The integration of digital technologies into educational practices has reshaped traditional learning models, creating a dynamic and accessible global landscape for higher education. This paradigm shift transcends geographical boundaries, fostering a more interconnected and inclusive educational environment. This comprehensive literature analysis explores the impact of e-learning on higher education students in the digital era. A meticulous review of 53 studies, sourced from reputable databases including Web of Science, Taylor & Francis, Springer Link, ProQuest, Elsevier, and Scopus, was conducted. Employing the content analysis method, the selected studies spanning from November 2012 to April 2023 were systematically examined. Predominantly utilizing quantitative methods, the studies, largely originating from the United States, China, Malaysia, and India, focused on university students. Key variables such as student engagement, perception, and academic performance were consistently employed across diverse educational settings. The synthesis of findings revealed that e-learning technologies positively impacted academic achievement, student satisfaction, and collaborative efforts. Moreover, challenges associated with technology usage and internet access were identified, which impact e-learning implementation. The study proposes further investigation through a mixed-methods approach to explore students’ interactions with the educational environment while utilizing e-learning technology in institutions of higher education.

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Singh, R., Singh, S.K. & Mishra, N. Influence of e-learning on the students’ of higher education in the digital era: A systematic literature review. Educ Inf Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12604-3

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