Distance education information

Student in Kerala, India participating in distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school,^[1][2] or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance.^[3] Traditionally, this usually involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via mail. Today, it usually involves online education and the learning is usually mediated by some form of technology. A distance learning program can be completely distance learning, or a combination of distance learning and traditional classroom instruction (called hybrid^[4] or blended).^[5] Other modalities include distance learning with complementary virtual environment or teaching in virtual environment (e-learning).^[3]

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent educational modes in distance education.^[1] A number of other terms (distributed learning, e-learning, m-learning, online learning, virtual classroom etc.) are used roughly synonymously with distance education. E-learning has shown to be a useful educational tool. E-learning should be an interactive process with multiple learning modes for all learners at various levels of learning. The distance learning environment is an exciting place to learn new things, collaborate with others, and retain self-discipline.^{[citation needed]}