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1980-1989 - the age of the computer

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When was online education first introduced? What was the first online university? When did online education become popular? The history of online learning in higher education can sometimes seem too big to wrap your mind around, much like the internet itself, so we have put together a timeline to help better understand where today's online colleges and online degrees come from.
Online Education ties together several historical threads - computers, distance learning, and telecommunications, just to name a few. This means tracing the history of online education goes back much further than just the dawn of the Internet.

We have done our best to bring all these related streams together into a single timeline. But, be aware, online learning is a lot more than just internet technology. It also merges educational theory, computer technology, and even legislation. All of these are needed to make today's online education possible.

If you want to know more about Current Trends in Online Education, or tips for online college, check out more of our articles at The Quad. If you are ready to begin your search for online colleges, but don't know where to start, check out our definitive ranking of the Best Online Colleges and Universities. Finally, if you want to know more about the technology discussed in this article, our ranking of the Best Online Bachelor's in Computer Science Degree Programs can get you started.

A Brief History of Online Learning

Caleb Phillips begins advertising private (mail) correspondence courses in the Boston Gazette newspaper. Informal "correspondence educations" can be found thereafter, with varying degrees of quality and consistency.

The Calvert School of Baltimore (Maryland) is the first primary school in the US to offer correspondence courses.

The Univeristy of Wisonsin-Madison sends course materials and lectures on phonograph records to distance learners, embracing new technology as a means of distance education and setting the stage for online learning.

John Logie Baird invents the first television in England.

The National Home Study Council forms. They would change their name to the Distance Education and Training Council in 1942, and the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) in 2015.

Radia Perlman begins to design the IS-IS (Intermediate System to Intermediate System) routing protocol. Essentially, this programming enables users to link computers into a network merely by plugging them in. This way, the computers configure automatically, instead of manually.

Douglas Van Houweling begins overseeing the National Science Foundation's NSFNET. Early networking efforts connected thousands of science and research groups (mostly schools), and would lay the groundwork for the global commercial internet we know today.

David Farber, the "Grandfather of the Internet," helps establish the National Science Foundation's Computer Science Network (CSNET). CSNET proves instrumental in raising awareness of computer networking technology.

Linus Torvalds creates Linux, which would become a leading mode of Open Source software, a necessary aspect of many modern online learning platforms.

Tim Berners-Lee creates the first website on August 6. The first website address is: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. The site is still active today.

Al Gore "Invents" the internet. In actuality, he creates and helps pass the High-performance Computing and Communications Act ("The Gore Bill"), allocating $600 million toward advancing internet technology and creating the "Information Superhighway" (the term was eventually subsumed by the internet).

The World Wide Web (WWW) opens to the public, allowing for internet use and online education as we know them today.

Western Michigan University develops a system of automatic computerized grading known as "Computer Assisted Personalized Approach" (CAPA).

The Electronic University Network offers a Ph.D. program through America Online.

Blackboard Course Management software launches, effectively opening the market to a wide range of online options that were previously considered too unwieldy to handle.

California Virtual University is established to provide students with information about online courses.

The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks is established to publish and promote academic research on online education.

The Interactive Learning Network is created and used by multiple schools as an early (LMS).

Computer prodigy Aaron Swartz builds Creative Commons under the supervision of law professor Lawrence Lessig. Swarz was fifteen at the time.

Jimmy Wales launches Wikipedia.

YouTube/EDU launches.

Liberty University, a private, Christian college, first launches its online degree program.

More than 5.5 million students around the world enrolled in at least one online college course.

The University of Pennsylvania becomes the first Ivy League university to offer a totally online bachelor's degree program.

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If you're interested in finding out what's next for online learning, and how you can contribute to the next great wave of innovation, check out:

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When was online education first introduced? What was the first online university? When did online education become popular? The history of online learning in higher education can sometimes seem too big to wrap your mind around, much like the internet itself, so we have put together a timeline to help better understand where today's online colleges and online degrees come from.

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1990-1999

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2000-2019, internet age, information age

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2000-2019, internet age, information age

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This video is a good example of the age of the internet and how our lives have changed over the years because of the internet.

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Future of Documentary in the Age of Internet Video