Read the text and formulate its main idea.

 

DISTANCE EDUCATION

 

For the decades universities and colleges have been looking for ways of offering courses to students who do not have access to the university campus, usually because of physical distance. Nowadays it is obvious that new information technologies, in particular, WWW and Internet are major technological advancements reshaping not only our society but also that of universities worldwide. Through Internet universities can offer full university- level courses to all registered students, complete with real– time seminars and exams and professors' visiting hours.

 

The Web is extremely flexible and its distance presentations and capabilities are always up-to-date. It offers polysensory materials that is, the students can get the text, audio and video of whatever subject they are willing to have. Thanks to telecommunication networks students can not only essentially increase their informational potential, but also get a unique possibility to communicate with their colleagues all over the world. In fact, Russia's students can graduate from foreign universities while remaining in Russia. In light of this, universities have to capitalise on the Internet for teaching, and one progressive development of this is the use of Distance Learning.

 

Distance Learning is one of the most progressive methods of delivering knowledge nowadays. It can be defined as an approach to education delivery that replaces the same–time, same-place, face-to-face environment of a traditional classroom. It is a technology that makes it possible to deliver a good (and relatively cheap) higher education beyond a physical campus.

Distance education is used for a broad range of purposes:

 

z universities use it to increase the number of students who have access to higher education;

z companies use it to upgrade their workers' skills and keep them abreast of rapidly advancing technologies;

 

z individuals use it for their own professional development and to enhance their career opportunities;

 

z governments use it to provide on-the-job training to teachers or other workers, to enhance the quality of traditional primary and secondary schooling, and to

deliver instruction to remote rural areas that might not otherwise be served. The potential benefits of Web–based learning resources are:

 

z flexibility in the place of learning;

z material may be presented in alternative formats, speech, print, graphics, voice;

z material can be adapted to various learning styles;

z student can clarify, rehearse and review supporting materials without interrupting the flow of the learning;

z session for classmates;

z problems of distance, transportation and physical accessibility are reduced. Though the possibilities of Distance Learning are great and it’s really an innovative

way of knowledge delivery it challenges the human mind. Much research should be done in the area to find out the effective ways of computer usage in educational process.

Distance Educationis defined as a formal educational process in which the majority ofthe instruction occurs when student and instructor are not in the same place. Instruction may be synchronous or asynchronous. Distance education may employ correspondence study, or audio, or video, or computer technologies.

Distance Learningis technology used in Distance education. It refers to the alternativeapproach to traditional classroom instruction, whereby learning packages are delivered to the learners via multiple channels: mail, media...The term is used to designate any learning that takes place between a teacher and a learner when they are not in the same place at the same time.