In an online classroom, you will take instruction from a person you may never meet. Online instructors have to find creative ways to make themselves available to their students, since the tradition of holding office hours is ineffective when the students are scattered all over the world. In order to collaborate with students, online professors tend to provide phone and e-mail contact information for their students, and set specific hours for conference calling. Generally, they try to be available for phone calls during daytime and evening hours, since many online students hold jobs during the regular school day and must do their online work in the evenings.
Online classes still incorporate class discussions into the curriculum. Instead of meeting in person to talk about class materials, students "meet" in a virtual chat room or online discussion forum. In most online courses, students will post answers to discussion questions and then post responses to the answers their classmates have posted. The class syllabus generally requires a certain frequency or caliber of posting in order to earn a high grade in the class. In some situations, the professor may even schedule live chat sessions for classmates to converse in real time over the Internet.
Group work is not eliminated in an online class. Even when students live in different parts of the world, they still work together on assignments for online classes. Group work generally involves completing a project or paper with a research component. Online students may find it helpful to divide the work among group members and set up regular "check-in" times to see that all work is completed on time. Often, the professor will set up specific discussion boards in the class forum for every group, and group members can use these boards as a place to exchange ideas and post rough drafts of the assignment. Sometimes, group members may find it necessary to call one another or keep regular e-mail contact for the duration of the project or assignment.
In an online class, all assessment must be submitted online. Most classes will involve a series of essays or papers, research assignments, or Power Point presentations. These can easily be submitted online via e-mail or an assignment submission feature on the class web site.
In some cases, such as for online math courses, assignments may be brief responses to questions or problems submitted via a typed document. Class discussion and participation in group work will also be calculated into the group grade, and some professors may assign small reading check assignments to guarantee student completion of reading assignments.