You have an instructor, classmates, advisers, learner support resources, technical support, and Penn State s vast University Libraries. Each student also gets a course Roadmap which details every aspect of the experience. This helps to ensure that you do not get lost in cyberspace. The course also is interactive. When the instructor poses a question in the on-line learning environment, all students get a chance to answer and then reply to other student s responses.
Students can thoroughly explore a topic because discussion is done in an asynchronous manner.
If you encounter a difficult concept, many times the course content is supplemented by multimedia-based, interactive exercises that demonstrate the concept visually. For example, in a section about the power of databases, one interactive exercise allows you to interact with a virtual database by manipulating the tables, the views, the reports, and other features. We believe the course is part of the next wave in education. The Pennsylvania State University Penn State is an Equal Opportunity Employer Please direct all inquiries or comments to the IST Webmaster .