The Use of Innovative Methods to Deliver Technology Education Laboratory Courses via Distance Learning: A Strategy to Increase Enrollment

Distance learning is not a recent innovation in education; correspondence courses having been used for over 150 years, but new interactive technologies are providing new opportunities and strategies for teaching at a distance (Smaldino, 1996). Several studies have compared face-to-face classrooms to distance classrooms in order to evaluate differences in student performance and quality of instruction. A meta-analysis of these studies showed that distance learning students performed equally well and some distance courses outperformed their classroom counterparts (Bernard et al., 2004).