Online Learning
Online learning, or e-learning, refers to all learning undertaken by electronic means. This means that different types fall under the umbrella of this term: educational websites, tele-training, telematics teaching and e-training. Redecker (2008, p.13) defines it as: “the use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services, as well as distance exchanges and collaboration”.
While e-learning has been spreading in education since the 2000s, social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn...) and social media (Wikipedia, YouTube, Second Life...) are currently focusing attention on the relevance of communication tools for e-learning. E-learning now goes by many names: social learning, mobile learning, serious games, learning 2.0, flipped learning or enhanced learning. In this way, learning is breaking out of its institutional straitjacket. This has several consequences: increased learner autonomy, decentralized knowledge distribution, faster access to available knowledge and a richer context for collaboration to create new knowledge.