Some schools have physical classrooms that students incapable of attending the class can participate in via webcam. Additionally, instructors can send recordings of the classroom so that students can watch the classroom lecture and discussion on the student's own time. DVDs and VCDs can be played on a standalone DVD player or on a DVD player in a computer. Sometimes, students may keep the DVD. Other times the student must return the DVD after the class or pay a fee for the DVD. The teacher can also provide podcasts of the class and put those podcasts online for the student to download.
Students can conference with their teachers through an Instant Messenger or through an audio correspondence program, similar to corresponding via a telephone. Students can ask their teachers questions. With these tools, conversation is more rapid than email communications, and the student and teacher can more easily have a back-and-forth conversation.
Classes held entirely online often use course management systems. Students log on to these systems and can often access various tools designed to make correspondence between the students and the teacher seamless. These management systems have tools similar to bulletin boards, which allow students to upload files and hyperlinks they want to share with the rest of the class or must share for a grade. Some aspects of the class management system are private, while other aspects are visible to all of the students.
Instructors often email exams and paper assignments to their students or post these materials on the bulletin board. Assessment through the Internet can be more problematic than assessment in traditional courses because students can more easily cheat on exams both by asking friends for help and also by looking up information on the Internet.
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Real-time chats can allow the entire class to participate in an instruction. Students can type text and hit "send," and other students can respond to these comments. However, these chats can become overwhelming as a large number of posts can appear faster than most students can read them, so many teachers do not use these tools as often.