What is distance learning? Definition and Meaning

Distance education is when learners listen to lectures, complete tasks, and communicate with teachers without offline physical contact with them. There are many forms, approaches, and realization methods, and we’ll review them here.

Various tasks and conditions require various approaches to education. Education for schools and universities, scientific, personal, and businesses are very different. Here we’ll overview various types, but with the focus on corporate education as our primary objective. Let’s start with the general overview of distance education and then continue with its advantages, peculiarities, and implementation.

Education is the directed knowledge exchange, leading to the acquisition of new concepts, ideas, and skills. It’s required to understand how to do something or how some part of the world works. Various branches of science explore different parts of the world: physics and chemistry show how the world functions at different levels, while engineering disciplines teach how actually to work with various mechanisms to change the world.

This is a brief introduction to education in general, to understand the distance learning meaning: transmit knowledge efficiently and remotely. As we’ll see, such an approach can be highly beneficial, as it enables people to learn without attending classes and using efficient schedules comfortable for them.

Therefore, the distance learning definition is transferring some knowledge via the digital medium, with task assignments, checking, and communication for feedback and discussions.

Such an approach to education has many pros and cons, and depending on your purpose, it can be applied to a more or lesser extent. We believe that all companies and institutions can benefit from it: you can check our articles about blended learning and microlearning to see various approaches to implement distance learning elements for the company. You can combine it with offline learning, making corporate education remote where possible, saving time and money greatly.

As follows, efficient distance learning requires various resources for it. At first, there should be various learning materials, including books, infographics, videos, simulations, and tests. Learners also should complete their tasks to reinforce knowledge and apply it in practice, obtaining a measurable result. In addition, there should be a platform for learning organization, a learning management system (LMS) that will facilitate communication, information exchange, project management, learning and work monitoring, and learner motivation. Last but not least, the management should be proficient in learning process organization, so it’s important to master materials connected with it, too.

Distance learning can greatly improve the organization's functionality. So, let’s overview its advantages and disadvantages.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages that need to be considered when implementing distance education. Some of them can be overcome by proper organization, but not all learning activities can be made remote. Let’s overview examples of these disadvantages

With all advantages of distance learning, it can make education much more convenient and engaging. Its disadvantages are rooted in organization difficulties and inherent limitation, and if they’re considered, they can be overcome. It’s especially relevant for business environment, as companies should maintain their employees’ skills high to be competitive and efficient.

Let’s now specify types of distance education to see various approaches to it, so you can understand which of them suits you best.

Therefore, different types of distance learning are suited for different educational scenarios. All of them can be applied in various settings. Let’s learn more about these settings.

However, it’s also much less immersive, and learners may face procrastination and a lack of motivation in general to end the course, both in universities and corporate environments. To prevent them, this approach should deal with motivation and interactivity, ensuring proper communication with learners and their engagement.

Distance learning is usually online, so we use this term in conjunction with online learning. However, there are differences, as distance learning’s aims and objectives are not always similar to online learning. The latter is based on the direct connection between teacher and students and a specific learning curriculum, while the former is grounded on specific learning materials to teach specific tasks and concepts. These aims have much in common, but they are nevertheless different. Let’s see the short table to compare.

Online education requires a platform to be hosted. While there are services like Udemy, companies need their own corporate platform to organize education processes. Distance learning tools organize and automatize learning processes, serving as a hub for information exchange. Without it, it’s hard to coordinate all employees, workflows, and educational materials.

So, a good distance learning platform always has project management elements, such as a task planner, to set clear deadlines and organize learners, be they students in the university or workers in the company. It’ll connect learners together and assign them according to their tasks and responsibilities, ensuring that they’ll complete them. Motivational elements, such as ratings and interactive courses, will ensure immersion and increase the rate of course completion.

How to choose the best distance learning program for you? As always, the best one is the one that fulfills your current purpose: no more, no less. Some of them have many features but are quite clumsy and expensive. Others are small, efficient, and highly customizable according to your needs. Thirds have advanced features to generate educational content. Which features do you need, and which are excessive? We’ll overview several examples, so you’ll make your choice easier.

Let’s wrap the article by comparing the ten distance learning solutions in our top list. Here we’ll show briefly for which purposes each tool is the best.