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Correspondence education is a formal education process and system where learners and instuctors are separated by distance and/or time. Correspondence education is highly similar to distance education as it was the preceeding process and term for this form of education.
Class material and communication between learner and instructor are carried out mainly through the regular postal service. Other aids of the computer, videocassettes, videos and telecommunication methods are also used (Evans, 1995, p.233).
Correspondence courses are offered by many education institutes, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, businesses, industry departments and even the defence forces, around the world.
Correspondence education begin in the mid 19th century in Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States of America (California Distance Learning Project, 2005, [URL])(Clark, 2000, [URL]). In Bath, England, Sir Isaac Pitman taught shorthand by correspondence in 1840 and the use of correspondence by universities grew from off-campus lectures that were given by the Scottish educator James Stuart from the University of Cambridge, England (Clark, 2000, [URL]). In 1874 the Illinois Wesleyan University began offering bachelor and graduate degrees through correspondence and in 1883 the first corresspondence program began through the Chautauq Institute, America, where Sunday school teachers were taught (California Distance Learning Project, 2005, [URL]) (Clark, 2000, [URL]). There was great expansion and adpotion of correspondence education by institutions after World War II through political encouragement around the world (Heerema & Rodgers, 2001, p.19).
In the early years correspondence education was carried out through the the use of the postal system to send written material between students and teachers. The people that most benefitted from this were people with physical disabilities, women who were not allowed to enroll in institutions that were only open for men, people who had jobs during normal school hours or those who lived in remote areas where there were no schools available (California Distance Learning Project, 2005, [URL]).
The first Australian correspondence school was established in 1909 by the Victorian Government. However correspondence teaching began much earlier through itinerant teachers. In 1922 a national correspondence program was adopted. (Higgins, 1981, pp. 1). In Australia after World War II, the ‘Schools of the Air’ was developed. Teaching was carried out via radio to students in distant and rural areas (Heerema & Rodgers, 2001, p.19).
Correspondence education became widely available throughout developed nations, such as Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, countries of the former USSR, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan and America. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), among other organisations, is attempting to modernise education in developing countries through correspondence education (Evans, 1995, p.233).
The development of the radio in the 1920s and of the television in the 1940s led to extended learning opportunities through broadcast programs and educational material. Other technological advances, such as the long distance telephone systems in the early 1990s, teleconferencing in the 1980s and 1990s and the development of the Internet, World Wide Web and the new found abilbity of computer-network communications (California Distance Learning Project, 2005, [URL]), led to new media communication developments and the use of these in education. This has led to the adpotion of distance education as the more modern term for correspondence education.
Distance Education
Distance Education - Technologies
Distance Education - The United Nations
Clark, D. (2000) Correspondence: A History, retrieved October 3rd, 2005, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/correspondence.html.
Distance Learning History (2005) “California Distance Learning Project,�? retrieved October 3rd, 2005, from http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=whatis&pg=4.
Heerema, D. L., and Rodgers, R. L. (2001) “Avoiding the Quality/Quantity Trade-Off in Distance Education,�? T H E Journal vol. 29, iss. 5, pp. 19.
Evans, T. (1995) “Distance Education in Australia,�? European Journal of Engineering Education vol. 20, iss. 2, pp. 233 – 234.
Higgins, A. H. (1981) Distance Education and Pupils: From Horseback to Satelite, Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society.
Laura harris 16:26, 27 Oct 2005 (EST)
