Virtual College

Providing access to higher education for all students, especially adult learners, is made easier by the fact that most virtual universities have no entry requirements for their undergraduate courses. Entry requirements are needed for the courses that are aimed at postgraduates or those who work in specific jobs.

Coursework
Providing access to higher education for all students, especially adult learners, is made easier by the fact that most virtual universities have no entry requirements for their undergraduate courses. Entry requirements are needed for the courses that are aimed at postgraduates or those who work in specific jobs.
Studying at a virtual university has essential differences from studying in a brick and mortar university. There are no buildings and no campus to go to because students receive learning materials over the Internet. In most cases, only a personal computer and an internet connection are needed that traditionally required the physical presence of students in the classroom. Course materials can include printed material, books, audio, and video cassettes, TV programmers, CD-ROM/software, and web sites. Support is offered to learners from the professor or a tutor online through e-mails when they have problems with the course.
Taking online courses means that students will be learning in their own time by reading course material, working on course activities, writing assignments, and perhaps working with other students through interactive teleconferences. Online learning can be an isolating experience since the student spends the majority of their time working by themselves. Some learners do not mind this kind of solo learning, but others find it a major stumbling block to the successful completion of courses. Because of the potential difficulty of maintaining the schedule needed to be successful when learning online, some virtual universities apply the same type of time management as traditional schools. Many courses operate to a timetable, which the student receives with the course materials. These may include the planned activities for each week of the course and due to dates for the assignments. If the course has an exam, the students will be informed where they have to go to write it.
An example of a university that maintains a tight schedule is the Virtual Global University (VGU) in Germany. VGU offers a graduate program “International Master of Business Informatics” (MBI)—a master program on information technology and management that takes an average of four semesters to complete (for full-time students). Each course has a lecture or a virtual class meeting every week. Afterward, students get a homework assignment; for example, they have to solve an exercise, elaborate on some problem, discuss a case study, or take a test. Lecturers give them immediate feedback, and one week later, the same happens again.
Coursework can be the same for a Virtual University as the On-campus University in certain cases. NYU Tandon Online, for example, provides the same course work to its online students as the on-campus students at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. This is done using advanced technologies.

Quality
Students taking “virtual” courses are doing real work to get their degrees, and educators preparing and teaching those courses spend real time in doing so. That is, students meet a comparable level of academic learning outcomes and are evaluated through programs constructed according to standard university-level criteria. Though it should not be assumed, virtual universities may be accredited in the same way as traditional universities and operate according to a similar set of academic standards.
However, questions remain about accreditation and the quality of assessment. Accreditation is required to assure students that the online institute has certified online instructors who have the expertise and educational qualifications to design and carry out the curriculum. Assessment standards need to be particularly closely monitored in virtual universities. For example, respondents in studies of opinions about online degrees will rate an online degree from Stanford the same as an on-campus degree, because the name of the granting institution is recognized.[6]

Teaching modes
When online courses first began, the primary mode of delivery was through a two-way audio-visual network. Then as well as now, many of the virtual study programs were mainly based on text documents, but multimedia technologies have become increasingly popular as well. These web-based delivery modes are used to expand access to programs and services that can be offered anytime and anywhere. The spectrum of teaching modes in virtual education includes courses based on hypertext, videos, audios, e-mails, and video conferencing Teaching on the web through courseware such as Web CT and Blackboard are also used. See Virtual education.