Online learning is the umbrella term for any educational experience delivered over the internet, encompassing self-paced video courses, live virtual classrooms, cohort-based programs, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), and hybrid models that combine these modes. It is a broader and more neutral term than e-learning, which in corporate contexts often implies a specific SCORM-packaged module architecture. The distinction matters when talking to clients: a founder building a live tutoring marketplace is doing online learning but may not think of it as e-learning. For engineers, the main architectural split is between asynchronous delivery — video on demand, static content, and assessments with no real-time requirement — and synchronous delivery, which demands WebRTC infrastructure, low-latency media servers, and session-state management. The two tracks have largely separate technology stacks and vendor ecosystems. Online learning also carries a network-quality dependency that physical classrooms do not: a learner on a congested mobile network in a low-bandwidth region needs adaptive bitrate streaming and offline caching that a campus course never requires. Practically, when a product manager writes "online learning platform," engineers should push back and ask: synchronous, asynchronous, or both? The answer changes the architecture more than almost any other requirement.
