It would be easy to assume that online universities were developed right around the time that the World Wide Web was taking hold – a sort of what came first, the chicken or the egg logic. Online universities actually have their roots much further back than the emergence of the “www” in 1991. At the University of Illinois in 1960, the PLATO system was launched (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) and became the first computer run instruction system. By the 1970s, PLATO was becoming very popular, with at least 1,000 terminals operating around the world. Of course, PLATO was a far cry from the online universities popular today. It offered courses ranging from elementary to university curriculums. But the courses were almost entirely text based; when there were pictures, they were thumbnail size and very poor quality.

Other companies entering the market would build on PLATO to begin offering better designed educational systems to a wider audience. Still, PLATO did offer the rudimentary beginnings of the online university. Among the many tools that PLATO introduced were quite a few that formed the foundations of distance learning, including remote screen sharing, instant messaging, online tests, and chat rooms.

The Internet Improves Online University Quality

Nearly ten years after the development of PLATO came the most influential event in the history of online university – the 1969 founding of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Defense, called the ARPANET. In 1971, Ivan Illich described a vast computer educational network in the book “Deschooling Society,” partially inspired by the emerging public Internet. But Illich was closer in theory to the Greek Plato than the computer educational system of the same name.

Illich proposed a dense system of skill exchange, peer matching, and reference services. These systems would be set up to teach members different facts and opinions using recordings. But even then, Illich also remarked in his book that he feared a revamp of the current educational system could be interpreted as an attack on society saying, “Even the piecemeal creation of new educational agencies which were the inverse of school would be an attack on the most sensitive link of a pervasive phenomenon, which is organized by the state in all countries.”

In 1982, the Computer Assisted Learning Center (CALC) was developed as an offline educational system in New Hampshire. Although the system was designed to operate without the help of the Internet, it was designed based on the same principles of online university today – to provide an affordable and high quality alternative learning experience to adult students.

Individualized Instruction Begins

With as much influence as CALC had on the modern online university system, it still operated with a one-size-fits-all model, where student A received the exact same instruction as student B. This changed in 1992 with the Computer Assisted Personalized Approach (CAPA) developed by Michigan State University. This system was developed to give students a more personal education, adjusting study material based on the student’s progress. The first time this system was used was in a 92 student physics course offered at Michigan State University during the Fall 1992 semester.

Once it was clear that the individualized instruction model worked for a single group of students, it also became clear that the model could be tweaked to include a whole range of courses. This is exactly what CALCampus did in 1994.

CALCampus gets credit as the first entirely online university system. It also began to change how people viewed distance education. Even with computer systems, many students were still forced to print assignments and mail them to the professor before 1994. With CALCampus, every portion of the online university system was provided online. CALCampus was also the first online university to connect students directly with the professor, and with fellow students. Finally, the online university was beginning to resemble a true college experience.

Even with all of the technological advancements, students and professors were still weary of the online university model. Few people understood how online schools were meant to work, and even fewer believed that the online university model could come close to the traditional offline education atmosphere. The late 90s saw two major developments that began to change the public’s attitude toward online universities.

Blackboard and WebCT Introduced

The brain child of Cornell University, the Interactive Learning Network (which would later be coined “Blackboard”) was introduced in 1997. Blackboard was important because it was the first online university tool to leverage massive online databases that were gaining popularity at the time, most notably MySqL. This merger allowed Blackboard to not just help students enhance their offline learning experience, but nearly replace it altogether.

While the Interactive Learning Network showed that it was possible to design and manage an online university curriculum from one site, WebCT made tremendous strides in lifting the veil from online universities and making them more approachable to the public. Also introduced in 1997, WebCT allowed professors and students to manage grades and assignments, as well as interact with professors and students in real time. WebCT was quickly adopted not just by emerging online universities, but by offline schools as well. In 2006, WebCT was finally acquired by the Blackboard corporation.

The Future of Online University

Today, 96% of all colleges and universities in the United States offer some form of online coursework. Instead of turning away from online university models, about 1/3 of all offline schools consider online coursework to be vital to their continued success. In 2009, U.S. president Barack Obama pledged $500 million to support online courses. Just one year before, a London school became the first institution to offer fully interactive virtual training scenarios for paramedics.

While the traditional school model will always be more appropriate for some subjects (especially team based subjects like music), the online university model has become a door for people that could not afford higher education in the past, or could not devote a full time schedule to offline school. Just as the telephone redefined communication and the automobile changed how we viewed transportation, the online university could very well have much more in store for us, changing the way we view education forever.