Terms used in Distance Education

A school …

   1.  has an administrative unit;
   2.  is a legal entity; 
   3.  is a learning provider, imparting skills and knowledge
        to students; 
   4.  is a provider of services within a community of learning; 
   5.  is not simply a single home-based private educational
        program;
   6.  voluntarily subjects itself to peer review; 
   7.  is responsible for the education provided in its name; 
   8.  undertakes the assessment and continual improvement
their of its quality, giving particular emphasis to student
learn learning;
   9.  provides dynamic interaction between instructors and
and  students and among students;
 10.  provides more than just tutorial assistance to students;
 11.  grants credit.

Asynchronous – students and instructors are not
        meeting simultaneously. Instruction is delivered
        and students access it on their own time schedule.

Blended School – a school that has both face-to-face
        instrcution and distance education.

Distance Education – can be correspondence, online,
        satellite, or any modality in which the teacher and
        student are not in the same physical location.

Learning Service Provider – organization that develops
        and/or provides various types of learning services to 
        schools, such as curricula, instrctional materials, and 
        programs.

Online Course Definition 
        Fully-Online – at least 80% of course content
                 delivered online with few, in any, face-to-face
                 meetings.
        Blended/Hybrid – 30-70% of course content delivered
                 online, blending face-to-face and online delivery.
        Web-facililitated – 1-29% of course content delivered 
                 online. Uses web-based technologies to enhance 
                 what is basically a face-to-face course.
                 (Sloan-C, K-12 Online Learning, 2007)

Third-party service provider – a professional organization 
        engaged by a school to provide services for and in the 
        name of the school to its students or staff.

Synchronous – instruction in real-time. All students
        participate at the same time.

Virtual Schools – all instruction is non-face-to-face, no brick
       and mortar classrooms.

Online glossary of terms (eLearners)