Distance education or
distance learning is the education of students who are not physically present at a
school. Courses that are conducted partly through distance education and partly on-site are referred to as
hybrid or
blended education.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the
World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent developments in distance education. A number of other terms (distributed learning, e-learning, online learning, etc.) are used roughly synonymously with distance education.