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Lifelong learning refers to all the learning activities undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competences within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective.

Blended learning combines e-learning with typically classroom training, combining the positive aspects of both (24/7 accessibility and face-to-face interaction).

Axis 1. Education
Formal education is typically provided by an institution. It is structured in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support and leads to certification. Non-formal learning, on the other hand, is not provided by an institution and typically does not lead to certification but it is structured in terms of objectives, learning time or learning support. Informal learning results from daily life activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not structured and typically does not lead to certification. It may be intentional but in most cases it is not.

ODL may be described in terms of the domain to which it belongs: general and cross-domain, corporate, government, health care, military, K-12, higher education, informal learning (museums, communities, homes), professional associations, or non-profit.

Axis 2. Learning
Learning theory differentiates among many different types of learning, including classical and operant associative (or conditioned) learning, discrimination learning, habituation, concept formation, problem solving, perceptual learning, psychomotor learning, imitation, insight learning, imprinting, transfer, recall and forgetting. ODL-products may be categorized in terms of the types of learning it supports or trains.

The science of adult learning becomes increasingly important. Adult learning differs from childhood learning in many respects. Much more than children, adults are autonomous and self-directed, goal-oriented, and problem centred. They need to know why they are learning something, they need a pragmatic angle and they bring accumulated life experiences to the learning process. Also, the motivation for learning (and participating in education) of adults differs from that of children.

Axis 3. Learning styles
A learning style refers to a person’s preferred or default cognitive processes, including storage and retrieval of information, perceiving, thinking, and problem solving.
Much more than in a traditional classroom, in distance learning a teacher or course designer can—must—take the needs and sensitivities of different learning styles into account. ODL-products may be categorized in terms of the types of learning styles they take into account, either explicitly or by allowing for a sufficient degree of personalization.

Axis 4. ODL tools
While ICT is not the core element of ODL, ICT offers tremendous opportunities to make ODL more attractive and more effective. The number and type of interaction between students and teachers and among students, may be useful to categorize ODL-tools.
1. one-alone: (online) resources paradigm
2. one-to-one: the e-mail paradigm
3. one-to-many: the bulletin board paradigm
4. many-to-many: the conferencing paradigm

ODL tools may be synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous tools allow students (and teachers) to interact in real time. Apart from this, synchronous and asynchronous tools offer the same functionality.

Management tools--including resources, communication, grading, etc., --are a special category of ODL tools.

Axis 5. Instructional design
Constructivist instructional designs may be categorized as follows. Rule-based designs consist essentially of closed tasks whose completion requires the application of rules, procedures or algorithms. Incident-based designs expose the learners to preferably authentic events or incidents. They involve individual or group reflection as well as judgments and feedback. Strategy-based designs include complex and ill-defined tasks, decision-making tasks, trouble shooting, diagnosis and strategic performance of an individual or a group. Role-based designs involve the acquisition of skills, knowledge and understanding through the assumption of roles, preferably in real-life settings.

Axis 6.
This axis groups a number of factors, such as copyright, open source, enrolment and price—these are not discussed here.

ODL is as complex and diverse as all education is. It is also very new and not all of the lessons that can be learned from traditional face-to-face education apply. A well designed course of action is essential, but so is an adventurous attitude. Locate yourself on the six-dimensional map presented in this chapter and start exploring.