History Of Online Learning

Even though technology may be relatively new due to its ever-changing nature, online education is very familiar to the new education systems. The origin of online classes can be traced back over 170 years ago where the instructor at Great Britain used to send lessons and assignments to his students through an email. With continued upgraded modern versions of humble predecessors, online learning was born. Online classes have overcome many drawbacks that are associated with traditional face to face classes. Such a significant improvement in the education system has allowed students to interact with other students and instructors in a real-time class.

So, how did all this began?

The University of Illinois (1960)

With the creation of internet by the US Department of Defense, the internet opened up an opportunity for the University of Illinois to create an intranet in 1960 for its students. The intranet was an integrated system in which the computer terminals were linked together to enable the students to access course materials and listen to the recorded lectures.

In 1960, the evolvement of Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations (PLATO) was at its height. It successfully operated on thousands of computer terminals across the world. Until then, who knew that PLATO would be used in the creation of the numerous social networking concepts that we have today? Such concepts of social networking include chat rooms, message boards, and screen sharing.

Lemonade Stand (1979)

With the realization of the Lemonade Stand, the first mostly played educational computer game which was released in 1779 by Apple; the game introduced a generation of computer learners. Lemonade Stand was included in the Apple software packages in the 1980s which created an enormous impact by merely using a simple concept of creating a successful lemonade stand. Thanks to Lemonade stand for introducing the generation to a superb idea of profoundly learning in virtual environments.

Electronic University Network (1984)

The Electronic University Network (EUN) was majorly established with a robust and achievable mission of helping universities and colleges' to expand their availability of online courses to students. In 1986, Electronic University Network introduced its first online class which was compatible with Commodore 64 and DOS computers. However, the establishment of Electronic University Network was early before the invention of the great World Wide Web. Hence the students used proprietary software with communication which was over the telephone lines. In 1992, there was a successful collaboration between Electronic University Network and America Online which served as the EUN's higher education coordinator.