Schools eyeing virtual campuses by Ivana Macakova

Nowadays a new type of university education appears. It`s learning via internet, via virtual environment. We know it also as eLearning when students are mostly at home and they study, comunicate with professors, also they do exams through internet. So they don`t have to go to any school building.A lot of universities build campuses in popular virtual world Second life which was created in San Francisco. Universities use the campuses to show to potential students how the university is going.Each university make their own virtual programs for students. For example The University of Phoenix create their own fictitious companies where students work with the realistic documents and analyze them. Campuses are something like a game for students. The main aim of this type of education is mainly to allow to students learn in realistic environment where they solve real problems but safe and controlled.Some universities don´t have a Second Life campus, but they provide learning through webcasts, students can stream lectures to their computers or to MP3 players.Some professionals said that virtual education was based on self-education, students grew- up with technologies.This type of education can definitely change the way of study in next years.It´s really necessary students learn on real problems not only memorize the theory. But this will be a long- distance running while each university will have their own virtual environments and will be prepare to use all its advantages. And it`s also a challenge for the professors to find the right way how to use it in educational process.

by Ivana Macakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by: Lenka Macurakova