Courses you teach, resources they need.

It's an axiom to say educational technology is rapidly evolving. Classrooms that were once populated with only chalkboards now have projectors and PowerPoint presentations. Textbooks come with CD-ROMs and DVDs, or they can be downloaded in their entirety.

Online tools help professors create communities with their students, and online courses provide access and convenience. According to IDC, a research firm based in Framingham, Mass., two-year schools will increase their spending for distance learning by 25 percent in the next few years, from $68.7 million in 1999 to $209.7 million in 2004. The market is there, but it's just now beginning to be tapped.

Real value comes in being able to provide instructors with the resources for the courses they teach, while at the same time providing students with the resources they need to create a value-added learning environment. The makeup of a typical community college student is changing.

Diverse student bodies include people with different learning styles, so what works for one student or class won't necessarily work for the next. One of the key benefits of educational technology is that it can be adapted easily and changed based on an individual student's needs or the level of the classroom. Just as you can't teach every student in the same way, you can't expect distance learning solutions to be one-size-fits-all.

Delmar Learning is part of The Thomson Corp., a leading global provider of integrated information solutions for business, education and professional customers. Delmar Learning has a long history of serving the community college market with products and services for the health care, technology and trades, and career education markets. The Web site (www.delmarlearning.com) is the company's gateway to all its electronic resources including eCourses, eVideos, eChapters, eBooks and traditional textbooks and software.

With delmarlearning.com, students can take courses, watch videotaped techniques and procedures and order electronic textbooks -- all without ever leaving their computer. Instructors and entire community colleges also can pick and choose the content they want to create their own branded distance learning site.

One of the problems community colleges face in integrating distance learning into their curriculums is compatibility. Different vendors often offer incompatible solutions, forcing the community college to choose one solution over the other and sacrifice the content they need, invest in expensive hardware, or require instructors to build the online courses themselves.

With delmarlearning.com, there is no additional infrastructure investment. Students can study on campus at the library or computer room, in their home, public library or any place that has a Web-enabled computer. The solution is customizable so the college or instructor selects and pays only for the content desired. The service also allows instructors to choose the learning tool that best fits their needs.

Some instructors have students that are more visual learners and might choose eChapters or eBooks to reinforce their classroom instruction. Others might have students that learn best through auditory repetition and would choose eVideos that can be played multiple times. With delmarlearning.com, instructors can choose the specific format that best suits their students' learning styles.

Focusing on Skills

More and more, community colleges need to focus instruction on teaching the skills a student needs to obtain a job after graduation. For example, an automotive technology student may need to review how to perform a cylinder leakage test or how to diagnose and repair engine noise. A cosmetology student may need to review how to apply acrylic nails or what the proper disinfecting procedure is. These are critical skills the students need to know before entering the work force.

By creating a blended learning approach that combines classroom instruction, actual hands-on lab practice, then reinforces the skill by viewing the procedure online, students are exposed to the same skill in a variety of ways. Consistent repetition of critical skills helps students learn and remember the new skill. Delmar Learning's eVideos are online streaming video clips based on Delmar's comprehensive videotape collections and are segmented into skill-based clips. Each clip is closed-captioned, approximately three minutes long, and focuses on a specific skill within a subject. When combined with classroom instruction, these video clips can be a powerful way to reinforce learning among students.

Realizing the benefits of eVideo for distance learning offerings, Naugatuck Valley Community College is working on a pilot program that includes 19 eVideo clips from Delmar Learning's "Communication in the Workplace" video series. The college selected the eVideos for the Communications course of its Effective Leadership in Manufacturing certificate program. The instructor felt there were some communications skills that were more effectively taught using video, such as body language. Naugatuck Valley Community College is a member of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium, and this distance learning course will be offered to the general public this spring.

Standalone courses, test preparation sites and continuing education units also are available for those instructors that are looking for a complete online solution with full reporting and tracking capabilities. In addition, WebTUTOR courses that are designed to accompany specific Delmar textbooks in either WebCT or Blackboard formats are available. Most eCourses can be reconstituted for a community college or customized to suite the instructor's requirements.

Nadege Williams, director of cosmetology for Pasadena City College, has just begun integrating Milady's WebTUTOR products into her freshman cosmetology program.

The WebTUTOR product accompanies Milady's Standard Textbook of Cosmetology and includes an online calendar with the syllabus; presentations of chapter objectives and lessons, practice quizzes, and games designed to supplement learning activities. "Students like this better than a workbook," Williams said. "There are a lot of fun activities that seem to really be helping them a lot. We're real pleased so far."

Technology also allows for customization of the standard learning tool for most students: textbooks. Often instructors want to use only part of a textbook, or parts of multiple textbooks. They also may want to complement their existing textbook with an online supplement that provides additional reading as a resource for students.

Delmar provides a solution. One tool, eChapters, is designed to build content into a comprehensive, searchable Web-based research tool. Instructors can select a customized collection of chapters that includes exactly the content they need for their classroom.

Delmar Learning's eBooks maintain the concept of traditional textbooks, but add features that make reading and browsing more intuitive. They provide for searchability of digital content, annotating, and bookmarking. The major difference between eBooks and eChapters is that eBooks are downloadable and eChapters are read online.

Financial Benefits

In addition to the inherent benefits in delmarlearning.com, the site also offers financial benefits to community colleges. It can help increase the number of students that can be supported with little or no change in per student expenditures. It also can help increase lifelong learning revenue from alumni, as they continue to return to the site after graduation to hone their professional skills, seek certification test preparation or look to gain new skills.

Many distance learning companies were formed during the Internet boom years. Few of these companies exist today.

One of the critical elements for a distance learning solution is that the vendor needs to know and understand the customers needs, plus have the content and knowledge to be able to build learning solutions that add value to traditional classroom teaching.

Many distance learning solutions tout the convenience aspect as the key feature, but until students and instructors find value in the content as a learning resource that can complement classroom instruction, distance learning will continue to poke along.

With its roots in traditional educational publishing, Delmar Learning understands how to build value-added educational technology products and services that ultimately provide instructors with the resources that help them teach, and students with the resources that help them learn.

GREG BURNELL PRESIDENT AND CEO DELMAR LEARNING