How to Define “Online Course” and “Distance Education Course”

NOTE:  A “course” is an offering for academic credit of some kind.  A “session” (for instance) would not be for academic credit, and would probably last for a relatively short time.  Much of the market for distance education may well be for the latter.  But the qualifiers “online” and “distance education” can be applied, m. m., to both a course and a session thus understood.

Online Course =df   A course in which all or most of the following is presented to the student(s) through an electronic medium (e.g., the WWW):

  1. The persona of the instructor

  2. The pedagogical content of the course

  3. The management of the course

  4. Communication between each student and instructor

  5. Communication between or among students

  6. Assessment tools

 It is important to notice that a course might satisfy this definition even if the instructor and the class are on the same campus—even in the same building, although that would be odd.  The conceptual content of the course, such as would be delivered in a textbook, might or might not be presented to the student(s) through an electronic medium.  It might also be the case that any examinations are administered by an actual person in a supervised location.

 An Offline Course is simply one that fails to satisfy this definition.  Hence a course, online or offline, might turn out to be a mixed online, or mixed offline, course, depending on the emphasis of the instructional mode.  Thus a classroom-based course might have part of its content and instruction delivered online, with some of the interaction among class, content, and instructor occurring both online and offline.  Or a largely online course might have part of its content and instruction delivered offline, with a requirement that some kind of physical encounter among class, content, and instructor be part of the conditions for passing the course.

 Distance Education Course =df   A course in which the presentation of all or most of the following to the student(s) does not require (for all or most of the course) that the class and the instructor be in the same place at the same time:

  1. The persona of the instructor

  2. The pedagogical content of the course

  3. The management of the course

  4. Communication between each student and instructor

  5. Communication between or among students

  6. Assessment tools

A Distance Education Course thus understood might also be an Online Course, but need not be.  And, contrariwise, an Online Course as defined might also be a Distance Education Course, but need not be.

T. McFadden
Last modified 10/26/00