Distance Education Innovations and New Learning Environments: Com ...

Chapter 1

Introduction

Tremendous changes have occurred in the field of education over the past generation, propelled in large measure by emerging technologies. Technology has created new opportunities and possibilities for learning and instruction not possible just 20 years ago. Two intimately related fields of educational practice that are expanding these instructional possibilities are distance education and blended learning (blended learning is an outgrowth of the distance education movement). Distance education is now firmly planted in its third generation, evolving from single media (first generation), to multimedia (second generation), to its present state of two-way interactive media (third generation; Bates, 1994). During the former generations, distance education was viewed as nothing more than correspondence study or self-study, popularly perceived as a peda-gogically poor pathway to teaching and learning. With the rise of new technologies and the concomitant ubiquitous infrastructure to support powerful hardware and software, the limitations that prior generations involved in distance education encountered are quickly dissolving, and