In the early 1960s,
Stanford University psychology professors
Patrick Suppes and
Richard C. Atkinson experimented with using computers to teach math and reading to young children in
elementary schools in
East Palo Alto, California. Stanford's
Education Program for Gifted Youth
is descended from those early experiments. In 1963, Bernard Luskin
installed the first computer in a community college for instruction,
working with Stanford and others, developed computer assisted
instruction. Luskin completed his landmark UCLA dissertation working
with the Rand Corporation in analyzing obstatcles to computer assisted
instuction in 1970.
Early e-learning systems, based on Computer-Based Learning/Training
often attempted to replicate autocratic teaching styles whereby the role
of the e-learning system was assumed to be for transferring knowledge,
as opposed to systems developed later based on
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), which encouraged the shared development of knowledge.
As early as 1993, William D. Graziadei described an online
computer-delivered lecture, tutorial and assessment project using
electronic mail. By 1994, the
first online high school had been founded.
In 1997 Graziadei, W.D., et al.,
published an article entitled "Building Asynchronous and Synchronous
Teaching-Learning Environments: Exploring a Course/Classroom Management
System Solution". They described a process at the
State University of New York (SUNY)
of evaluating products and developing an overall strategy for
technology-based course development and management in teaching-learning.
The product(s) had to be easy to use and maintain, portable,
replicable, scalable, and immediately affordable, and they had to have a
high probability of success with long-term cost-effectiveness. Today
many technologies can be, and are, used in e-learning, from
blogs to
collaborative software,
ePortfolios, and
virtual classrooms. Most eLearning situations use combinations of these techniques.
