OPINION: In higher education, weve been talking about e-learning for years. But, in practice, we have mostly been teaching in the same way just through different mediums; that is, delivering one-way lectures online, posting digital lecture notes and occasionally innovating with quizzes.

Instead of students passively learning from a lecturer, imagine immersive online serious games where students can learn through practice.

Virtual patients now allow medical students at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to develop diagnostic and clinical skills through online scenarios. They can learn from their mistakes with no adverse consequences for real life patients and without the need to be at the university.

This is the kind of big leap in higher education that adaptive e-learning can provide.

New generation of thinking

Its funny to think that the same basic idea that lets online gamers score points by shooting weapons in sci-fi worlds is the same that can now help medical students learn how to save real lives online.

Many of the next generation of our graduates will have honed their skills in simulated learning environments in much the same way that pilots train on simulators before they fly.

New technology is enabling students to learn in an interactive way, which will leave the YouTube clips and web course papers of todays online education light years behind.

Rapidly evolving online technologies, ubiquitous connectivity and powerful mobile devices mean educators all over the world are now scrambling to understand the profound disruption web-based mass online learning is ushering in.

And Australian universities are no exception. At UNSW, were starting to use an Adaptive e-Learning Platform which allows students to learn exactly the same things they did in a conventional laboratory, but more conveniently and cheaply. Teachers can now create their own lessons in interactive virtual worlds with different online scenarios.

See more here:
Online universities are the future of higher education