Defining the term Distance Education will be an exercise in patience. What you will find are many definitions for Distance Education.

What we do know is that distance education is evolving and that newer technologies promote the development of new definitions.

The Association of Educational Communications and Technology published a monograph that explains the definition of Distance Education.
They defined Distance Education into four components:

1. Institutionally based,
2. There needs to be a separation of teacher and student,
3. There needs to be a sharing of Data, Voice, and Video,
and
4. Interactive Telecommunications.