The Cutting Edge: Promising Technologies and Strategies for Online Science Education

Abstract

The evolution of online education will continue to be coupled to and constrained by innovations in Communication and Information Technologies (CIT). Only a few years ago, web-based courses were characterized by slow data transmission, at 56 kbps with dial-up lines that dramatically limited the styles of communication and the amount of multimedia that could be incorporated directly through the internet to support learning. As a result, course development was regularly compromised by technical limitations. For online education, the ideal threshold in data transmission speed is that point at which an author’s course vision and creativity is unrestricted by the instructional hardware and software permitting the effortless incorporation of interactivity styles and multimedia. This ideal will be met at different times by particular course authors, institutions, and even between disciplines (e.g., English versus science).