ABSTRACT

After years of teaching face to face at a small residential private liberal arts college, the author made the transition to teaching distance-delivered classes exclusively at a large state university. This chapter explains the current pedagogical literature and firsthand experience to present the opportunities, successes, and challenges of incorporating digital content into the curriculum. Students themselves come to class technology-enhanced, toting with them personal devices such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, and polling devices. When connected, all this technology makes possible the web-assisted classroom, where face-to-face interactions are supplemented with online material such as streaming media, virtual tours, Google Earth maps, educational games, live polling, and other electronic activities. New technologies have made it possible for schools to offer courses through delivery methods other than face-to-face, an approach broadly referred to as distance education. Broadcast delivery, including those courses offered via interactive videoconferencing (IVC), enables teachers to reach a large and scattered student body live via digital broadcast.