**3. Online learning historical, theoretical and conceptual excerpts**

#### **3.1 Historical**

Distance learning the father of online learning or education is traced to have evolved in the United States and England over the last three centuries. It is reported by Palvia et al. [10] and Kentnor, [11] that as early as 1728 Caleb Phillipps proposed to teach shorthand via exchanging letters with students throughout the US. After sometime, radio and television course delivery systems followed the parcel post approach and this was consolidated the launch of a federally licenced radio station in 1919 by the University of Wisconsin. The evolution and progression of distance education can be traced over the last 300 years and it has been running parallel with innovations in communications technology. This approach of teaching and learning continues to grow in popularity with great introductions like e-learning that have taken centre stage recently especially during the covid19 pandemic. In the 1990s distance education grew rapidly because of the advance of the online technical revolution. Although it did not gain popularity since very many educationist preferred the physical learning environment.

Kentnor [11] notes that Isaac Pitman is recognised for being the pioneer of distance education when in 1840 he began teaching shorthand by correspondence in Bath, England. He mailed postcards to students and would instruct them to transcribe shorthand passages from the Bible and they would return them to him

through for him to correct. Three years later Pitman's work is said to have influenced the founding of the Phonographic Correspondence Society in 1843. Later in 1873 Anna Elliot Tichnor founded the Society which Encouraged Studies at Home in Boston, Massachusetts and this was entirely based on the correspondence school model. The Illinois Wesleyan College started offering degree programmes in absentia and it was the first academic institution of this kind. The invention of a spark transmitter in 1894 by Gugliemo Marconi was also a milestone towards strengthening the field of distance education. More establishments followed like in 1906 the university of Wisconsin-Extension was founded and turned into a distance learning unit and these launched an amateur wireless station that was purely dedicated to education broadcasting.
