Distance learning, form of education in which the main elements include physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of various technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication. Distance learning traditionally has focused on nontraditional students, such as full-time workers, military personnel, and nonresidents or individuals in remote regions who are unable to attend classroom lectures. However, distance learning has become an established part of the educational world, with trends pointing to ongoing growth. In U.S. higher education alone, more than 5.6 million university students were enrolled in at least one online course in the autumn of 2009, up from 1.6 million in 2002. Students of all ages, around the world, were forced into distance learning in early 2020 once the global coronavirus pandemic resulted in the widespread closure of many schools. Videoconferencing software such as Zoom gained greatly from this development. Zoom became one of the most popular services of its kind, one of the most downloaded applications worldwide, and a household word. Teaching, and the student-teacher relationship, was fundamentally changed.