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E-Educators Use Daily Mix of Digital Tools

Online instructors have more options in their arsenal than ever to help deliver and explain academic content to students—blogs and wiki pages, social networks, and videoconferencing software, to name a few. But even the most experienced online instructors can struggle with which tool to use, when, and how.

The days of online classes delivered exclusively through discussion forums and e-mail are long gone, experts point out, and the formats of online-learning environments themselves are more diverse. In "virtual classrooms," teachers have to facilitate collaborative learning online, while in "virtual courses," much of the student learning is self-paced and independent.

So just which technology tools are...