Many ideas and events led to the development of the TEC-VARIETY framework and the 100+ activities for motivating and retaining online learners described in this book. Much of it has its roots in the mid-1980s, long before most educators had ever heard of online learning.

At the time, Bonk was, in fact, a deeply bored accountant working in a high-technology company. In his spare time, he enrolled in paper-based correspondence and television courses as well as outreach and extension courses to qualify for graduate school in educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin. During these courses, he learned much content knowledge in education as well as psychology. Perhaps more important, Bonk gained an appreciation for the multiple modes of educational delivery as well as the varied ways in which learners could access courses, and then change or improve their lives. When online learning began taking off a little over a decade later, he coordinated several national research projects on the state of e-learning and blended learning in both higher education and corporate training in the United States. His research soon entered into K–12 and military training settings and then expanded globally.