As we look at the history of Distance Learning, we find that it is indeed as old as learning itself. The concept of learning something at a different time and/or location than the deliverer of the education can be traced as far back as the days when the cave dwellers carved symbols on the walls of their caves. Those symbols tell the story of those early people, and have been read across the centuries by archaeologists, scientists and the curious. Today we are certainly separated by time from those ancient people, and distance learning as we know it today is defined by the delivery of education over the distance of location and/or time.

Looking ahead from the era of cave dwellers to the more modern time of the Greek teachers and philosophers, circa 360 B.C, we discover that the learned people of the time expressed concern about the new fangled learning modality called the ‘written word.’ Evidently the teachers were not happy about their words being written down and then read by someone in a different location or time – how would they know that any learning was actually taking place?

As travelers through time, we can now take yet another leap all the way to around 60 A.D. An apostle by the name of Paul began to educate followers of the Christian faith through the letters or epistles he wrote and sent out to the people in the distant villages and nomadic camps. These letters were instructional documents telling the people of the Messiah – and the people read them and learned in a different location and at a different time than their teacher, Paul.

Once again traveling through the time and distance of history, we arrive at the 1700s and 1800s, when there was a lot of activity under the umbrella of Distance Learning. Correspondence courses were offered on both sides of the pond – the first notable ones were courses designed to teach a new method of taking notes called “The New Shorthand.” These courses were offered in Britain and the United States to thousands of students through the mail. Schools, colleges, and organizations were founded based on the idea of students learning subjects, not at the foot of the scholars, but through the mail, through reading, and through corresponding with their teachers at different times.