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Online Education: Hold the Bricks, Mortar and Ivy-Covered Walls
A broadband connection has the power to dramatically change how, where, when and how much students of all ages can learn.
Online education - often called "distance-learning" -- covers educational or training courses delivered to off-campus locations via audio, video or computer technologies. Add a broadband connection like a cable modem, digital subscriber line (DSL) or wireless link, and students can explore and utilize more content at blazing speeds.
E-learning can't replace dissecting a frog in the biology lab or conducting research in the campus library. But it can offer more and better instructional methods to more people in more places. It promotes fosters convenience, flexibility and the ability to customize a field of study. Broadband-powered Web sites can match students with "virtual" or human tutors. And some schools have installed software that gives parents a portal to their kids' classrooms, as well as access to school calendars and class schedules.
Online education via a broadband link can:
- Deliver more resources and opportunities to schools in rural areas that don't have large universities or budgets to offer non-core subjects like Latin or music.
- Help working professionals earn a degree without leaving the work force. And stay-at-home parents can further their educations without leaving their kids.
- Let students of all ages access a wealth of multimedia information to supplement what they get from teachers and textbooks.
- Help students customize education-related choices.
- Offer a wealth of resources to parents who home-school their children.
Most of today's online education efforts target the professional development market. That is, they allow "non-traditional" students who don't live on college campuses - professionals traveling down career paths, stay-at-home moms working on graduate degrees, and the like - to take courses and enter degree programs to further their knowledge in a specific area.
One such venture -- Denver-based eCollege.com , which works with educators to create online courses and virtual campuses-reports that 85% of the college-level faculty members who teach online say their students are learning as effectively online as they are on campus. Some professors say their online students are doing better than their more traditional counterparts.
How? A high-speed connection to the Internet can enrich the learning process by allowing students to take virtual tours of places they're studying in geography; access vast Web libraries; work with students in other states on an interactive science project, or join a chat session about Moby Dick.
