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Show learn. The [Utah] State Board of Education decided a few years ago that all students needed some specific computer training and created computer technology as a graduation requirement. It used to be that students only needed some type of computer credit. Now they have to take this particular class to graduate/' But this doesn't have to mean students are more technologically savvy than their instructors once they start college. The benefits of online classrooms "Start by creating a WebCT site for your class/' said Ron Yaros, assistant professor of communication at the U. "WebCT allows for communication between instructor and student, as well as encourages communication between students in the form of e-mail, postings and blogs. With WebCT, instructors can post their PowerPoint presentations for students to have before they come to class, giving them another way to prepare for in-class discussions on the material that is being presented." "I think the benefit of having 24-7 access to your course is a great thing. If you lose your syllabus or you misplace your lecture notes, you can log in to the course and retrieve that information at any time." total messages read. "I am not of the belief that a lot of students would spend that amount of time on a class if they did not have this tool to interact with. Indirectly they are spending 908 hours with me because I was on there everyday; I was looking, I was reading. I did not comment on everything but... that is an extra 908 hours that I spent with my students," Yaros said. Rebekah Grow, academic technology trainer and WebCT administrator at the U, said, "So many things are accessible by the Web these days...and education online is popping up everywhere. There are a lot of commercial and open-source learning management systems out there today. I think the benefit of having 24-7 access to your course is a great thing. If you lose your syllabus or you misplace your lecture notes, you can log in to the course and retrieve that information at any time. There is no wait if you need to email the instructor to send you the information. Having resources organized for you online for your specific course is also a huge benefit." In Yaros' 2007 New Media and The Individual, a special topics course, he took students' postings and blogs from WebCT and incorporated them into each class session by addressing the topics that he had not previously discussed. For Yaros, this proved to be an effective learning experience for his students not only because they were being introduced to a new type of learning via the Web, but because they ended up communicating about topics far more than they would in a normal classroom environment: Yaros counted 908 hours and 52 minutes total time spent by his students on WebCT or the equivalent of 37.8 days outside of the classroom. He recorded 2,712 visits made to WebCT and 11 7,903 Yaros and Grow aren't the only WebCT fans at the U. Marci Butterfield, assistant professor in Accounting and Information Systems, said, "The benefits of WebCT are that I can communicate information that should be of benefit to my students such as homework assignments, review notes, PowerPoint presentations, syllabus information, etc. I can also give them updates to any course information in one quick email that should reach all of my students who are actively engaged in the class." WebCTâ€"a safe place for comments Another benefit to WebCT is the increased participation 18 lessons | fall 2007 |