So, what can I summarize from my Internet teaching experiences? First is the point that information technology is changing today at a very rapid pace. It is hard to believe sometimes, but the World Wide Web has only been around since the first part of t he 1990s. Most fascinating is the rapid pace at which products based upon the Internet are emerging. What this means is that items that work today for Internet-based teaching may be surpassed in the near future by new methods. For example, we may find that video will be easier to include in lectures in the next year. Web-based tools for listservers, e-mail, and databases may also be useful for teaching.

Second, several points were most prominent from my experience:

(A) Using the Internet to it’s full capability will require that the students understand how the Internet functions. You may need to devote class time to instruction on how to the Internet. Alternatively, there are several web-based lectures on using th e Internet that you can refer too.

(B) Feedback from faculty to the student should be timely and frequent to engage the student at a distance. These students do not have the luxury of seeing the teacher when the need arises. Infrequent communication runs the risk of losing the participat ion of the student.

(C) I found that many of the same characteristics of teaching in the classroom also exist for teaching on the Internet.