Many colleges now offer degrees completely online where students never have to physically go to a brick-and-mortar campus. This online degree market was originally dominated by for-profit schools, but an increasing number of traditional state schools are making online degrees available, including community colleges. This dramatically expands the number of potential students for the state schools and offers degree opportunities for students who could not otherwise attend (such as students in rural areas). Many schools also offer online courses for degrees that require students to be on campus at least part-time.
On-ground or "face-to-face" courses can make use of the Internet as well. Some courses meet face-to-face occasionally with the remainder of the course taking place online; these are commonly referred to as blended or hybrid courses. These courses offer the benefits of both a traditional face-to-face course with the flexibility of an online course. Many schools are looking into ways to better integrate blended courses into their scheduling and course offerings.
So called "Web 2.0" tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and other user-created Web content are making an impact in higher education as well. Many teachers and schools are looking for ways to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their traditional classrooms and into online courses. Generally, Web 2.0 technologies allow the students to collaborate and create their own unique Web content and find alternative sources of information (such as blogs). Students are therefore active participants in knowledge creation, rather than simply recipients of pre-existing information.
An emerging Internet technology with the potential to impact higher education is cloud computing. Cloud computing takes the processing and storage requirements from a physical computer and places them online. One central server can act as an individual computer for many clients, creating what is called the "cloud." In theory, this means that universities will not have to constantly upgrade their campus computer technologies as all students will need is a keyboard, mouse, screen and Internet access to plug into the cloud. Upgrading the hardware on the main server will effectively upgrade the hardware for all computers plugged into it. This technology is still emerging and not widely used in higher education as of 2011.