On-line Curriculum (5 of 7)

Slide 5 of 7

Some fully on-line courses are facilitated through the university’s or college’s own server. Other on-line courses are provided via professional server companies. These companies free the institution to teach instead of maintaining and supporting a network. One example of an on-line educational service is Embanet Corporation (1997). The service provides 24 hour access to private educational sites with full support and numerous instructional modalities within one learning environment.

Instructional Tools

E-mail permits asynchronous communication between students and faculty or between groups of students (Olmstead, 1997). Casual communication can often augment instruction and aid in social relationships within the learning group. Instruction can be transmitted via e-mail or as attachments to e-mail messages. Students may also transmit completed assignments or examinations to the professor via e-mail. Faculty can provide individual or group feedback using this tool.

Web forms allow instructors to gather data, assignments, or test students via the Internet. The instruments can be in the form of open-ended questions (short answer, completion, or essay), selected items (multiple-choice or true-false), fill-in-the-blank, or pull-down menu selections. Tests can be e-mailed to the instructor or can be gathered in a database and then retrieved. Objective exams can be hand-graded upon receipt or can be computer-graded upon submission by the student prior to delivery to the instructor (Olmstead, 1998).

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