With distance education, the classroom is accessible to more students. Those students whose work schedules do not allow them to attend regular classes, or who are too far away, can attend class in your virtual classroom on the World Wide Web. Distance education gives instructors the opportunity to teach these students in a non-traditional setting the necessary skills and knowledge to advance in their college and work careers.

How will you create this virtual classroom? You can use a powerful and simple tool--PageOut--a free product available to you with the adoption of any McGraw-Hill textbook and the purchase of Glencoe software application and concepts products.

There are many different disciplines that are suitable for distance education. Career and Personal Development courses are easily adaptable to distance learning for traditional as well as returning students. For example, the Career and Personal Development course Peak Performance: Success in College and Beyond is designed to teach students the necessary skills and competencies to successfully make the transition to the workplace from the classroom. Typically, students take this course for personal and academic development. With distance education, you can make a student success course available to students on their schedules.

PageOut
PageOut is a powerful but simple tool that allows you, as the instructor, to create a virtual classroom through a series of templates. You can hold regular class discussions in the Discussion Area or post lessons for each student to read at his or her own pace. The Discussion Area also allows you to talk with students online. Use one of the styles already provided, or upload your own graphics to design a site that is uniquely yours. Post a full syllabus, lecture notes, assignments, even tests. You can also customize quizzes and have them automatically graded and added to your gradebook.

With PageOut, you can create a course Web site that can be an extension of your classroom, or it can be the classroom itself.

Using Distance Education in Careers and Personal Development
There is a wealth of valuable information online for students studying courses within the Career and Personal Development discipline. Many of the student activities in texts such as Peak Performance involve Internet research where students are asked to visit Web sites through links that are provided for each chapter to discover further reading, research, and activities. Throughout the Career and Personal Development texts, you will find Internet activities that can be easily incorporated into a distance learning course plan. Chapter specific activities and self-assessments are also included as part of the distance learning program. Students can also post questions and comments to one another and discuss course topics in the Discussion Area.

We have created a sample site using PageOut: http://www.glencoe.com/ps/peak/instructor

Student Responsibilities
In any distance education course, students are responsible for maintaining their own Internet connection. Instructors usually provide directions for students to get to the course Web site and get started. You may want to communicate this information with students by e-mail or by traditional mail before class starts.

In addition, students will be responsible for completing their own assignments and either uploading or e-mailing them to the instructor on time.

Motivating Students Online
It may seem difficult to motivate students without the face-to-face interaction of the classroom, but distance education provides many possibilities for keeping students focused on the class. Many instructors find it helpful to communicate with students regularly by e-mail to remind them of assignments being posted. In addition, distance education allows instructors to provide detailed feedback on student assignments through e-mail. Automatically graded tests give students instance feedback on their progress. Students can also communicate easily with each other in the Discussion Area, just as they would in a traditional classroom.

The world of distance education is growing rapidly because it meets the needs of both instructors and students. By adjusting to this new medium, you can reach out to new students and make an even greater impact on learning.