Web-Based Learning

Web-based learning (a major subcomponent of the broader term “distance learning”) is one of the tools with which education is delivered at a distance electronically. There seems to be many definitions, as well as terms, for distance learning, such as “distance education,” “distributed learning,” “remote education,” “online learning” and “Web-based learning,” which all may refer to the similar education deliverables. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Education defined distance education as “education or training courses delivered to remote off-campus location(s) via audio, video or computer technologies” (Lewis, Farris & Levin, 1999). Later in the 1990s, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) defined distance learning as education in which “the teacher and the student are separated geographically so that face-to-face communication is absent; communication is accomplished instead by one or more technological media, most often electronic” (AAUP, 1999).