Thanks to Stephen Downes, yet again, for pointing out Terry Anderson’s excellent piece on Open, distance, e-learning and other name confusion in his always useful Virtual Canuk blog. As Terry noted there has been a lot written on the subject. I was reminded of two pieces of work.
Robin Mason and Frank Rennie recently produced an elearning lexicon, E-Learning, the key concepts. I have a quibble with their conflation of e- and distance learning, but it is a very useful work which as much as resolving, illustrates the problems of trying to resolve definitions in a politicised field: micro institutional as well as in respect of national and international educational policies (q.v. one laptop per child project).
I was also reminded of work I contributed to an article for the UK Higher Education Academy on the Undergraduate experience of blended learning (citation below, link to pdf) by colleagues at Brookes.