Chicago, IL (PRWEB) November 30, 2006
In airports and on planes not, all of the people with earphones on are listening to music. Instead, they may be students learning. If they are enrolled in the online college degree programs at AIU Online, they may be listening to specially tailored multimedia content that supplements their online classes with the university. By making available podcast content that the student can download and listen to whenever time is available, AIU Online has solved the students' dilemma of how to make the best use of downtime imposed by travel and other job and family-related activities.
AIU Online (http://www.aiuonline.edu/) provides students in its online degree programs virtual classrooms that are multimedia rich-learning environments. These virtual classrooms are designed to support the learning preferences of the university's population of adult learners. For students who learn best by listening, there is audio content. For others who prefer to read or interact with course materials, there is available text and interactive course materials. The podcasts makes portable the audio content from one class session each week. By simply downloading the audio and listening to it whenever they have time, students can continue learning when they are offline. For students who prefer to listen and read, a text of the audio content is also available for download. This provides the adult learner two learning modalities - audio and visual.
According to Dr. Alan Drimmer, President of AIU Online, "because AIU online is focused on the needs of time-challenged adult learners studying online for their college degree, we are using podcasting to supplement and accelerate the learning process. Students in our online degree programs use the podcasts to add another layer in the learning experience. We have not developed them as substitute for the traditional classroom, but rather as an enhancement for the virtual classroom."
About AIU Online
AIU is an international university with residential campuses located in Atlanta, Georgia; Los Angeles, California; South Florida; Houston, Texas; and London, England. AIU Online is the web-based virtual campus of American InterContinental University. AIU is owned by the Career Education Corporation. For more information, see http://www.aiuonline.edu/.
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