Instruction Modes For Virtual Education
Many virtual study programs are mainly text based, using HTML, PowerPoint, or PDF documents. Any attempt to personalize the educational experience is essential in that students respond to personal attention and feedback. Today a wide spectrum of instruction modes is available, including the following:
- Virtual Classroom: Live teacher instruction and feedback online that enables real-time voice interaction, whiteboard sharing, and breakout sessions to enhance a student's learning experience. This provides students an opportunity to interact with the teacher as well as classmates by oral and written communication.
- Virtual operating room: giving students a space to learn the basic induction procedure before stepping foot in the real-life operating room.
- Hypertext courses: Structured course material is used as in a conventional distance education program. However, all material is provided electronically and can be viewed with a browser. Hyperlinks connect text, multimedia parts and exercises.
- Video-based courses are like face-to-face classroom courses, with a lecturer speaking and Powerpoint slides or online examples used for illustration. Video-streaming technologies is used. Students watch the video by means of freeware or plug-ins.
- Audio-based courses are similar but instead of moving pictures only the sound track of the lecturer is provided. Often the course pages are enhanced with a text transcription of the lecture.
- Animated courses: Enriching text-oriented or audio-based course material by animations is generally a good way of making the content and its appearance more interesting. Animations are created using Macromedia Flash or similar technologies.
- Web-supported textbook courses are based on specific textbooks. Students read and reflect on the chapters by themselves. Review questions, topics for discussion, exercises, case studies, etc. are given chapterwise on a website and discussed with the lecturer. Class meetings may be held to discuss matters in a chatroom, for example.
- Peer-to-peer courses are courses taught "on-demand" and without a prepared curriculum. A new field of online education has emerged in 2007 through new online education platforms.
- Social Networking: Using Web 2.0 technologies in virtual classrooms promotes increased social interaction, student-centered instruction and a problem solving curriculum. Students can address a problem that is oriented to a cross curriculum activity. Teachers will act as guides and resources, but it is up to the students to collaborate, discuss, review ideas, and present solutions.
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