At many campuses, the move toward integrating small pieces of curriculum into existing courses is well underway. Rather than receiving an entire instructional packet, instructors have access to a set of building blocks. This mixing and matching approach escalates the need for professional training and anytime-anywhere technical support. This eliminates the need for expensive campus-based server equipment and systems support. Using these products, instructors can e-mail their students frequently, respond to messages promptly, and remind students when test and projects are due.
Stymied students mail their jottings to the instructor, who can then see who responds accordingly.
Faculty users are becoming more sophisticated in managing virtual conversations, often generating FAQs to control the traffic. Today s faculty-authored sites very often have electronic representations of the same content they used to distribute on paper. While a course site might include lecture notes and a few presentation slides online, the course elements do not tap into the full power of Web-based interactive, multimedia content. Limited offerings rarely suffice, even when the site is designed to be a minor form of content delivery. Today s Net-savvy students are impatient and will click through if they are bored or frustrated.