Thing 17 - Dream Studies

I work for a small non-profit, which has an Institute - a professional training school for psychoanalysts. With students that all have prior careers, full-time jobs, families, and often other academic affiliations, the possibilities for online studies are endless. One could start dreaming by transferring all syllabi in the Moodle like course setup, where students participate in forums, get assignements, being quized and get their readings online. Should there be a way to redirect citations to the widely used PEP-Web database giving students a way to download articles directly, the print/copy in library process could be fully eliminated. I think the psychoanalytic field requires meeting of small groups and with a professor in a real class setting - I cannot yet imagine such a program functioning completely virtually. But a good deal of homework, paperwork, presentations, audiovisual materials, and lectures could probably be used online. Given a proper security, which most of the CMS systems provide, even some sensitive clinical materials used for training could be accessed via the web. Course evaluation is another thing suitable for anonymous online submission, as well as surveys and grading. Give it a try, and I bet the courses themselves will soon look different: when professors know their are teaching online, they will design presentations with a distant student in mind. There will be more Ted like talks and lectures, assignements will become more interactive, and who knows, maybe we will finally solve the parking problem...