Trends, Current Developments, and Concepts in Distance Learning and E-learning

A glance at the history of distance learning shows that there is a long tradition of using contemporary technical resources for learning and teaching purposes. For some, the holy grail of distance learning is the concept of the industrialization (mass production) of teaching and learning. Although reality has time and again caught up with technological promise, the scope for using new information and communication technologies in teaching has frequently been disregarded. In the future, learning will entail handling organized knowledge resources in demandspecific, organized communities formed for finding solutions to distinct problems and generating new knowledge about learning processes within the problem solving process. The development of the potential of "e-learning" (and actually, it bears contemplating whether this term puts too much emphasis on conventional learning organized in temporally-limited courses or similar, to the detriment of intelligent management of knowledge in its own working context) will depend upon the extent to which organizations succeed in promoting the development of a learning and working culture, for example, by incentive systems, team promotion, and free access to knowledge resources. The Masters degree in Organization Studies is presented against this background as an example of teaching using a combination of resources, leading to undreamed of learning success. Keywords: e-learning, distance learning, didactics, continuing education