Distance Education

What is Distance Education?

ECSU Distance Education: Distance Education at Elizabeth City State University offers students the option to achieve educational goals without attending traditional on-campus classes. Elizabeth City State University offers courses both at off-campus sites and online. Online courses afford students the opportunity to access their courses anytime and anywhere via the Internet. ECSU faculty participate in extensive professional development to enable them to develop and teach online courses. Online courses are equivalent to in class courses for the exception of the primary delivery method, the Internet. All online courses are taught using the Blackboard course management system. A course management system allows each student a unique login access to their courses.

For the purposes of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission's accreditation review, distance education is a formal educational process in which the majority of the instruction (interaction between students and instructors and among students) in a course occurs when students and instructors are not in the same place. Instruction may be synchronous or asynchronous. A distance education course may use the internet; one-way and two-way transmissions through open broadcast, closed circuit, cable, microwave, broadband lines, fiber optics, satellite, or wireless communications devices; audio conferencing; or video cassettes, DVD's, and CDROMs if used as part of the distance learning course or program.