Online Courses

Contact with your teacher and with other students is conducted primarily through the use of email, language course bulletin boards and online language course chat rooms. Using email and Web pages will probably be the most convenient and fastest way for you to transmit and receive materials from your language course instructor and your peers. Most lecture materials are transmitted via Web pages in online language course education. Instructors prepare their materials and post them to the Web well in advance of your language course assignments. Once the initial Web page has been posted, it varies from instructor to instructor as to how updates or continued materials are distributed.

Some will regularly update their Web pages throughout the term of an online course. Others will provide updates by emailing them to their online course students, and still others will send them via the postal service. No matter how updates are transmitted, it is important for you to take responsibility for receiving them.

If you already use a word processor, you will be accustomed to reading text on screen and should know how to scroll up and down pages. Reading Web pages for lecture materials or course language assignments is no different. They are usually presented as text and pictures. In addition to your scroll bars, you can also use the page up and page down keys to move through the material one screen at a time. The reading style you employ may also determine which method of scrolling you use.

Some online language course’s Web pages may also contain animations and sound. Depending on how those course’s pages are developed, you may be required to download certain browser plug-ins (e.g. Real Audio, Shockwave, or Acrobat Reader). It is also possible that language course lecture materials will be available as a file to download to your computer. (For example, a Microsoft Word™ document, a spreadsheet template, or a Microsoft PowerPoint™ presentation.) Instructions for downloading course’s information and/or installing free browser plug-ins to your computer are available in your browser documentation.

There are many online language course teaching programs that are entirely asynchronous (for example, those using print plus email, or those using the Web for both course delivery and interaction), and others that are primarily synchronous (for example, those using language course videoconferencing for delivery and interaction). However, the trend is to combine synchronous and asynchronous media in an attempt to capitalize on the obvious benefits of both modes.