Distance Education: The Status and Challenges

In the mid-1990s, the rise of the Internet and Web technology provided a renewed impetus to distance education. Just as the rise of the Internet and Web technology led to the subsequent dot com bubble and bust, the promise of a revolution in education and society that distance education was thought to hold turned out to be overblown. However, just as the use of the Internet and Web technology is taking root in commerce, governance, mass communication, etc. after the dot com bust, the use of the Internet and Web technology in distance education is expected to take root and deliver benefits to education and society over the long haul. In this article, we examine the current status of distance education, some key lessons learned from distance learning to date, and what it will take to make distance education successful both from technology and sociological perspectives.