Correspondence school was an educational institution that furnished home-study material through the mail. The University Extension movement in England first used the correspondence plan in 1868. The earliest practical courses in the United States were developed in the early 1890’s by President William Rainey Harper of the University of Chicago. The Blackstone School of Law in Chicago, and the International Correspondence Schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania, founded in 1891, were pioneering U.S. correspondence schools. Many of the courses in correspondence schools were of the vocational type.
As communications technologies changed, educational institutions gradually replaced the mailing of educational materials with other means of delivery. In the 1950’s, some schools began to use television broadcasts to instruct students. By the 1990’s, much home-based education involved the use of computers. Today, students may receive audio and video materials through satellite transmissions, broadcasts, the Internet, or other media. Massive open online courses (MOOC’s) aimed at large-scale interactive participation, open access via the Web or network technologies, and distance education that requires on-site presence (hybrid classes) are recent developments that have replaced correspondence schools. Distance education, also called distance learning, involves methods by which students gain access to educational resources that are far away from them.
