Distance learning for American and Australian students - long before coronavirus

For those who see 2020 as the time when distance education/homeschooling exp­lod­ed, Three Centuries of Distance Learning by Livia Gershon described the long historic infrastructure that enabled this expansion. Coronvirus is new, but distance learning is far from new.

Roy Sleator began the USA's history of distance learning in 1728, suggesting that students could have “several lessons sent weekly to them, and be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston.” Correspondence courses emerged in the C19th, when improvements to the postal service made it practical. The Pittman Shorthand course, established in Cincinnati in 1852, allowed secretarial students to mail in their work and, upon successful completion of the course, received a certificate of expertise.

And would-be sec­ret­aries weren’t the only ones to turn to corresp­ondence courses. In 1874 at Illinois Wesleyan University where degrees could be earned without being actually present in the classes. In 1890, the Colliery School of Mines created a correspondence course on mine safety. Over the next 3 decades, it evolved into the International Corresp­ondence School, which offered courses by mail for iron and railroad workers, and miners.

But by then live radio shows allowed educators to talk directly to students at home, even if the broadcast only went one way. By 1923, 10+% of broadcast radio stations were owned by educational instit­utions. And by 1934, Iowa University was broadcasting televised courses. Other tertiary institutions followed suit.

In time satellite TV could deliver a combination of live and rec­orded course material. It also let students call their teachers by phone and have questions answered on air in real time. Event­ually the USA adopted the technology associated with distance learning today, the World Wide Web. Jones International University, the first completely internet-based higher education institution accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, opened in 1993.

In Australia distance learning has long been an issue for children living in isolated parts of the continent where no school was est­ab­lished. I imagine that distance was the greatest challenge for education in the largest states, and those with the least central­ised populat­ions eg Queen­sland and Western Australia. These states covered a vast area, with small communities spread over many thousands of square kilometres.

In the early C20th the states’ Departments of Education started an it­in­erant teacher scheme, travelling through the outback often on horseback. They visited families with children and prov­id­ed school­ing, if only for a brief time and for only a few times each year.

New South Wales was the first to create Travelling Schools in 1908 where correspondence lessons could be incorporated as part of a learning regime.

During WW1 the existing schools in rural areas were closing, lead­ing to the growth of the Correspondence School, a bet­ter distance education method. Teachers were based in the cap­ital cities and lessons posted to and from students. Thankfully the dev­elop­ment of a good postal system made it possible to deliver mat­erials to children across outback Aust­ralia via the post in the 1920s.

During the inter-war years, the invention of the pedal radio by Alfred Traeger was significant. And in 1944 Adelaide Miethke, a member of the Council of the Flying Doctor Service of South Aust­ralia, created a plan to use two-way radio to give educational talks to children in outback regions of Australia. This was the core of the soon-to-be estab­lish­ed School of the Air, the term for distance schools catering for the primary and early second­ary education of children in remote and outback Australia.

The first lessons were officially sent from the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice Springs in mid 1951. Each state of Australia that utilised this means of training (all except Tasmania) had well-documented supervision of the service.

The radio network, maintained by the Royal Flying Doctor Service, was used by each child at home.
Photo: Broken Hill School of the Air.

The radio network, maintained by the Royal Flying Doctor Service, was used by the teachers to make two-way broadcasts to the children. 
Photo credit: NSW Dept of Education 

For students in isolated sites, the School of the Air was often their first chance of socialisation with children outside their im­mediate family. Each student typically spent an hour each day rec­eiving group or individual lessons from the teacher, and the rest of the day work­ing through the assigned materials with a parent or tutor. Additionally each student had direct cont­act with a teacher in an inland town like Broken Hill or Alice Springs each year, meeting other youngsters face to face. Studies have shown that such educat­ion was equal to the standards of traditional schools.

From the 1950s school classes were conducted via shortwave radio. Traditionally the students received their course materials and re­turned their written work and projects to their hub centre, using either the Royal Flying Doctor Service or post-office mail.

Isolated children soon had access to lessons via School of the Air, using HF radio to interact with their teach­ers and classmates. However the extension of Internet services into the outback event­ually enabled more rapid review of each child's homework. Most schools switched to the modern tech­nologies, delivering lessons that included live one-way video feeds and clear two-way audio.

By the 1990s developers of distance learning resources were max­im­ising the opportunities offered by digital technology eg res­ources could be delivered on CD-ROM or DVD. Now whole courses can be del­ivered online. Learning objects offer in­ter­active and engag­ing learning experiences around specific topics.

By 2005, all Schools of Distance Educat­ion delivered regular sched­uled lessons, representing one of the most signific­ant changes to the delivery of Australian distance educ­at­ion in de­cades. The great­ly improved service provides clearer reception and more reliable transmission.

Conclusion
Historically Australia delivered education over distance via corr­espondence and print based learning materials. Then radio was dev­eloped for use in distance-learning, to support and enhance the print based materials. And over time emerg­ing tech­nol­ogies were incorporated into the possible delivery op­tions.

If students are isolated from school into the future, through a pan­demic or any other cause, ensuring the best educational outcomes will still dep­end on the creation of app­ropriate learning resourc­es. And on inter­action with skilled teach­ers via the Internet.