In 1970, the birth of the British Open University was to be a catalyst in the new information society in education (Jarvis et al, 2001). Many colleges and universities are currently offering some form of distance learning or are planning to in the near future. New educational trends are usually associated with a lot of media hype and educational exaggeration. Accredited WWW distance learning courses are an excellent source of education, but there are many users out there who think everything on the internet is legitimate and authentic, anyone can start up a distance learning package with no accreditation and little knowledge base.
In order to enable "distance learning" it needs to embody specific topics, be selective, personalise content, offer user choices for learning routes, involve user interaction and performance review. These interactive technologies also allow students greater involvement and control over the learning process than in many traditional learning environments. King (2002) states that some students report having more "quality" time with a professor than they have experienced in the traditional face-to-face classroom. Rather than replacing the current educational system, distance learning appears to be operating to complement traditional approaches to learning (Mundorf and Bryant 2002).
Advancement in technology has affected many people in many ways. New technology has altered people's awareness, language, and the way society views the world. Technological advancements have brought the world closer together, and world communication is quicker. Computers have advanced so much since they were developed and have had a big impact on humanity. Computers were originally developed for doing calculations and have now come to the point where some people feel unable to function without the use of them. .
Distance Learning: Pros.
Information and communications technology (ICT) has brought about a new way to learn - electronic learning (Murphy, 2002).
