ABSTRACT
Many higher education professionals perceive distance education as a recent phenomenon, launched by the eLearning innovations of the 1990s. Distance education has its roots in the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1850s as a revolution in transportation—from steamships that created new markets for US goods to railroads that opened the continent for rapid development. Throughout the 1990s, eLearning proved to be a truly disruptive innovation. It attracted many institutions that had no prior tradition in distance education and, as a result, no familiarity with the historical research in the field. This chapter highlights major contributions by the Online Learning Consortium and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). It provides a summary of emerging leadership challenges facing the field. A globally distributed workforce and supply chain, combined with the need for continuous innovation, have made collaboration and teamwork critical workplace skills at all levels of an organization.
