In March 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic disrupted education worldwide. In the United States, the pandemic forced colleges and universities across the nation to adopt quickly emergency remote teaching and learning. The ability to pivot instruction seamlessly and effectively across learning formats (e.g., face-to-face, hybrid, online) while supporting student engagement, learning, and completion in an authentic and high-quality manner challenged higher education leaders. This historical review of the literature examines distance and online education from the 1700s to 2021 to identify how external and internal pressures and opportunities have impacted and influenced the evolution of educational formats pre-COVID-19, and how they will continue to evolve post pandemic. This historical review also explores how instructional design and pedagogy have been and continue to be influenced by technological advancements, emerging research from the Learning Sciences and Mind (psychology), Brain (neuroscience), and Education (pedagogy) science.

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