INTERNET

A good interactivity is hinged on the mainstreaming of instructors with their specialized background, getting into more generalized leadership roles. It is only there that they can ensure that creative collaboration and orchestration of online teaching/learning. A good Web-based design might not be in design at all, but in bringing design into mentoring and the leadership.Web-based learning can be a flexible and cost-effective alternative to classroom learning, but it can also be a colossal waste of time and money if not implemented correctly. One of the biggest issues facing universities wading into online learning is interactivity, both in its level and mode. How can the instructor make Web-based teaching more interactive? How can the instructor create a virtual classroom environment that maximizes participation? Just what constitutes 'interactivity' is hardly clear for some instructors. To some people, it means enabling learners and instructors to share ideas in a virtual chat room; to others, merely posting a question on a bulletin board qualifies as interactivity. Despite the popular conception of the Internet as our most interactive medium, on the great majority of Web-based courses the interaction all goes in one direction. Students interest, motivation, questioning, and interaction must be on display throughout the learning process.Throughout this site, the keywords and phrases: e-learning, Web-based learning, distance learning, distance education, distributed learning, learner-centered programs, and online learning are used as interchangeable terms.As the cost of technology decreases, many universities are finding ways to bring the benefits of the classroom into a distance-learning setting. However, distance teaching has been described as an industrialized form of education, characterized by rationalization of process, division of labor and mass production. The new information and communication technologies can facilitate this development, but only if policy makers are sensitive to the opportunities, especially at an international level. Web-based teaching and learning call for a serious reconsideration of the effectiveness(especially in light of increased demand for education and the opportunities for increased student motivation by new technologies) if integrated with knowledge-based design sites. Well-thought instructional design for any Web-based course contributes in moving students' expectations from promises to performance while taking the course.in developing your online courses you must pull together what may seem like incongruent weekly pieces of lectures, and other information into a cohesive experience for your students by using an effective interface design. An interface design encompasses four distinct, but related constructs--accessibility, usability, visualization, and functionality.The operational infrastructure of creating a more effective, efficient and accessible learning environment is critical to Web-based learning/teaching success. Yet all too often this element is overlooked or seen as incidental to the design and quality of the learning materials themselves. These are the key success factors in teaching/learning which is orientated towards the students, who will become autonomous self-learners using the media and the support services. The high quality of the Internet education process means the molding of abilities to learn. The advantages of online learning must outweigh the disadvantages for both the learner and the teacher to make the conversion process cost effective. However, there is no doubt that we have already entered the global information society. And there is no way back. Nowadays, content on the Web seems to be inexpensive. But knowledge is nearly never inexpensive. The importance of content will increase to become a critical issue for the Web-based teaching/learning.Content is the hidden asset in online degree providers by many universities. In order to grow and continue to be profitable, these universities will need to tap this asset in an environment where they can test the effectiveness of content to decide on what content is working and what content is not. However, often the measurement tools for how students respond to content are crude and the decision process is not structured partly because managing contents is a dynamic process.

We must find ways to discover how students respond to the content. For example

• Focus on action points during each week homework assignment. How many students are failing to submit their homework on time? How many revisions students did during the semester?
• The best web-teachers make it part of their weekly routine to interact with students. There is no greater skill you can develop than to have a deep understanding of how your students think. There is only one-way to develop this: by consistent interaction with your individual students.
• Usability test once a week. Monitor how each students try and complete a task on that particular week.