As a web course progresses, online communications such as e-mail and conferences enable students to receive comments and suggestions about their performance in the course, from both the instructor and their peers. Often, students receive comments and suggestions more frequently than in a traditional course, and the comments and suggestions are often of higher quality. Frequent responses to a student s performance in a web course enables them to refine their understanding, receive guidance, make contributions, and feel confident in their growing knowledge base all of which contributes substantially to the student s satisfaction, confidence, and motivation. Web software provides an increasingly accessible means of providing full-featured, authentic virtual worlds, using virtual reality technology for immersion and simulation. These virtual realities and experiences can anchor or situate learning in real-world contexts and can provide highly stimulating and motivating settings for student explorations and knowledge building.
Online tools can support group collaborative work.
Asynchronous and synchronous communications, online document annotation, and file exchange are now easier to use and more readily available, enabling students to work together, learn from each other, and see things from differing viewpoints. This also contributes to motivation and learner satisfaction. Finally, the web provides a gateway for nearly unlimited exploration and independent study when properly designed instruction has transformed a student into an intrinsically motivated learner who desires to go well beyond the course syllabus. Performance and Instruction, 26. 1-7. Toward a theory of intrinsically-motivating instruction.