"Distance Education"

Distance education is ...

• in the final analysis, education. The only real difference is that the majority of communications between teacher and student is mediated.

• includes the various forms of study at all levels which are not under the continuous immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in lecture rooms or on the same premises, but which, nevertheless, benefit from the planning, guidance and tuition of a tutorial organization. 

• the offering of educational programmers designed to facilitate a learning strategy which does not depend on day-to-day contact teaching but makes best use of the potential of students to study on their own. It provides interactive study material and decentralized learning facilities where students can seek academic and other forms of educational assistance when they need it.

• often defined as simply a form of education in which the learner and instructor are separated during the majority of instruction. But unlike independent or self-directed study, distance education usually implies the presence of an institution that plans curriculum and provides resources and services for its student.

•  defined for this study as courses in which teaching and learning and student support are undertaken where there is a non-trivial distance between student and tutor, and face-to-face contact is minimal. 

Distance education is the institutional or organizational provision of support for learners that involves no on-site attendance or face-to-face contact on the part of the learner. The distance learning support will provide an equivalent level of academic quality and learning experience as on-site, face-to-face delivery for the same learning outcomes.