On-line courses are no longer just for distance education students. Schools are also finding they benefit those attending regular classes, allowing them to do the same things as their distance education peers.
Now they can download course material, establish Internet research links, interact with fellow students and professors through chat rooms and bulletin boards and work together on an asynchronous or synchronous basis.
In fact, the teamwork skills such interaction teaches students is valuable in and of itself, because it provides students with training for the real world of employment, says Jennifer Bolt, director of the Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S.
At Acadia, all 3,700 undergraduates at the liberal arts university have access to notebook computers in the classroom through the Acadia Advantage program first introduced in 1996.
Bolt emphasizes however, that the university only uses such technology to support daily learning in and out of the classroom.
"The investment has been made to bring technology and other world resources through the Internet into the university environment with the idea that these kinds of tools can significantly enhance what happens in the classroom.
"On-line learning is a big supplement to regular classroom teaching. There's no question students love having technology as another layer of support," she says.
At Acadia, on-line access has enhanced learning in subject areas like sociology, psychology and science by allowing primary data to be more effectively collected and analyzed in the classroom.
"Such data used to exist in places that only Masters students were allowed to access. Now that data can be manipulated and accessed by undergraduates, dramatically increasing the research quality in those courses," Bolt says.
It has also enhanced visually oriented subjects such as geology, where students have, for instance, gone on-line to analyze pictures of rock formations using graphical imaging and measurement tools.
Bolt recalls how one Acadia student was able to use the imaging and analysis tools to accurately sample various mineral deposits. Her creative use of that application impressed a geological firm in Calgary so much they offered her a position.
In another application, Acadia students training to become music teachers are using a notational tool called Sibelius, through which they, along with professional composers, interact on-line, advising young children who are learning how to compose music.
"At most institutions where investments are being made toward getting technology into the classroom, students are the ones who push the faculty to use it more and more, and Acadia is no exception," Bolt says.
"If they have complaints, it's usually because there's not enough access to network resources.
" The other thing we hear on our campus, and I assume everywhere else, is that students are quite savvy about recognizing when technology is not being used effectively," she adds.
But academics also caution that how technology is brought into the classroom makes a big difference to its ultimate success at a particular institution.
For example, one of the keys to the success of on-line learning at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., according to Dennis Mayer, the university's associate vice-president of student affairs, is the fact they are introducing it incrementally.
"We didn't just drop everything we were doing, such as live teaching or print courses to do everything on-line. We are gradually integrating it where it makes the most sense and where we have the most capacity and interest to do so," he says.
"There are just under 4,000 full-time students at Laurentian, so we can afford to do things a little more personally, and we want to maintain that [outlook]
"We're not interested in developing on-line courses just to put large numbers of students through but rather to provide our students with an extra learning opportunity and service," Mayer continues.
The university has received a number of positive signals to indicate its on-line strategy is working, including full computer laboratories with students gravitating around the computer to access the Internet, wired residences with increasing usage over the past two years and a doubling in the number of faculty requesting Web-based teaching platforms this past year.
Still, there are potential downsides to avoid when it comes to on-line learning, says Mayer, who is also president of the Canadian Association of Distance Education (CADE).
He lists several factors to be avoided, including a sense of depersonalization if there is a "person to machine kind of approach, as opposed to two human beings discussing something over a cup of coffee;" as well as the costs associated with purchasing a computer, then getting an Internet provider and having to pay a monthly bill, which can be an expensive proposition for students in addition to their academic fees.