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.