• Open learning describes policies and practices that permit entry to learning with no barriers or minimal barriers of age, gender or time while recognising prior learning. 

• Distance education is the delivery of learning or training to learners who are separated, mostly by time and space, from those who are teaching and training. Conceptually distinct, yet complementary, these two phenomena come together in the term open and distance learning (ODL).

• ODL can be integrated with traditional approaches to education to create flexible learning, but can also operate independently.

• Online learning, eLearning and virtual education emerged as new terms in recent years. At first, they assumed that learners were connected to computers but now they refer more generally to ODL that uses various media and information/communications technologies (ICTs).

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