The development and social impact of internet-based distance learning

Internet and Online Education

Moon

In order to fully understand the impact of online courses and to place them within their proper social context it is important to understand how the idea of online learning developed. A literature review reveals a growing body of sources related to the history of the Internet and it social relevance. The following will explore this research and will summarize it in order to gain a proper understanding of its social significance.

Social Ramifications of Internet-Based Courses

The Internet has changed almost everything in our lives. It has changed the way we communicate, the way we do business and the way we learn. The Internet has acted as a leveling force between large and small corporations. The Internet has given customers and students more choices. In this respect it has served to increase competition as well. Even the traditional public school classroom now must compete with online public school classrooms that deliver their material to the student via the Internet.

The psychological and social aspects of online communication have been the study of many peer-reviewed articles over the past 15 years. The Internet is expected to have a greater social impact than television because if effects more areas of a person's life. The Internet affects their personal, family, school and work life (Surveying the Digital Future, 1999). It is not just for entertainment value. Some claim that the Internet has changed social relations (Civin, 2000), but others disagree and feel that the impact has not been as great as others claim (Katz and Aspden, 1997). There are many conflicting studies on the social and psychological effects of the Internet. The difficulty is in determining which ones are the most credible.

It was thought that the Internet would cause drastic changes in human interaction. However, it was soon found that human reactions and interactions are still controlled by the same set of mechanisms, needs, and emotions (Birnie and Horvath, 2002). The World Wide Web did not change who we are as human beings, it only changed the mode of communication.

In conclusion, the idea of remote learning began at the end of the 1950s with the advent of television. When the Internet began to gain public acceptance it was not difficult to translate this idea to the online version that we know today. Today, distance learning online is growing rapidly and becoming more sophisticated as technology develops. The social and psychological effects of the Internet have become an area of particular interest for researchers. However, at the current time it is difficult to draw any conclusions due to the existence of conflicting information.