There are a number of approaches to education and I will use the basic time and space grid to briefly discuss them and provide a few examples. There is considerable documentation on distance education from a wide variety of sources found elsewhere.
The table below covers some of the more common approaches to education
The same time and place education is synchronous education and the typical example is a school or corporate classroom.
The same time and different place education is distance education conducted in real time. An example would be a situation wherein an instructor is lecturing to a group of students in a distance classroom but at the same time.
The different time and place education is distance education conducted at varying times and locations. An example would be an online university or school with instructors and students living in various locations world-wide. Lectures as well as other materials may be posted by the instructor to a classroom Website. Assignments may be submitted by students to the classroom Website. Interactions between faculty and students and between students can take place via electronic mail or telephone.
This space is typically thought of as a synchronous space wherein presenters and audience are in the same room. Useful technologies in this space are laptops; software for laptops such as PowerPoint, Keynote, and meeting room software; the Internet; and projectors.
Useful technologies include: Zoom, GoToMeeting, Skype, and Zoom among many others. Audio and/or video conferencing are easy to use and easy ways to stay in touch. Even the basic telephone is useful in this space.
This space is represented by a team room and some bulletin board technologies may be useful here.
This space is typically thought of as an asynchronous space: Useful Technologies include: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Docs, among many others.
Reasons for distance education center around the differences in time and space for instructors and students as well as markets.
Students and / or instructors may not be physically collocated. It may not be practical to travel to meet face-to-face (some city traffic is so bad, for example, that online or distance education may be more desirable). Instructors and / or students may work different shifts Some students travel extensively and are not able to attend a school at one physical location Some students may desire classes or degrees unavailable at a local school There is a larger market / choice of available schools