Developing a Web-Based Course in Phases

Introduction: Distance education has grown in popularity and usage. At the same time, enrollments at postsecondary institutions continue to increase. This places significant growth pressures on institutions of higher learning. Institutions providing nursing education have historically faced limited faculty resources. This has made it difficult to meet demand for distance education; and an “all-at-once” approach to course development does little to ease this problem. In this approach, resources are expended up front before a course is offered. [See PDF for complete abstract].

Sequential incoherence in a multi-party synchronous computer mediated communication for an introductory Health Informatics course.

Online courses will play a key role in the high-volume Informatics education required to train the personnel that will be necessary to fulfill the health IT needs of the country. Online courses can cause feelings of isolation in students. A common way to address these feelings is to hold synchronous online "chats" for students. Conventional chats, however, can be confusing and impose a high extrinsic cognitive load on their participants that hinders the learning process. In this paper we present a qualitative analysis that shows the causes of this high cognitive load and our solution through the use of a moderated chat system.

Family Preservation Conference Participants and the Internet: Opinions about On-Line Continuing Education

Development of distance and distributed learning continuing education (CE) opportunities for human services workers requires existence of such CE offerings, participant access to the Internet, knowledge of the Internet's use, and willingness to enroll in such programs. A survey of human services professionals who attended the Family Preservation Annual Conferences in 2000 (N = 230) and 2002 (N - 197) revealed that 92% (n = 206) of 2000 survey participants and 98% (192) of 2002 survey participants have used the Internet, while 76% of 2000 and 56% of 2002 respondents reported no formal training in the use of the Internet and its features. Findings are reported that reveal substantial interest among subjects in the Internet as a medium for continuing education programs for professional development.