These companies free the institution to teach instead of maintaining and supporting a network. The service provides 24 hour access to private educational sites with full support and numerous instructional modalities within one learning environment. Casual communication can often augment instruction and aid in social relationships within the learning group. Students may also transmit completed assignments or examinations to the professor via e-mail. Faculty can provide individual or group feedback using this tool.
Web forms allow instructors to gather data, assignments, or test students via the Internet.
Tests can be e-mailed to the instructor or can be gathered in a database and then retrieved. The conversations are in text form only, but can be augmented by a web browser. A webboard is set up in outline style with topics and subtopics. Students or faculty may post a topic and reply to topics previously posted. The historical nature of webboards allows late enrollees the benefit of all preceding discourse and archives previous content for future review.