Medical Assisting Online is a ready-to-use distance education course that can also be an effective support to a traditional classroom program. The program is organized into modules and lessons that coordinate with reading assignments from Kinn's The Medical Assistant. The text comes alive in this unique online world as students report for work to a fictitious medical practice, complete with virtual co-workers, physicians, and patients. Students are guided through this virtual world with the help of an online mentor, applying content learned from the text and receiving advice and feedback along the way. Content and skills focus on key national curriculum topics. Highly interactive training exercises and plenty of assessment tools keep students engaged. Course management grading and tracking tools through Evolve, Blackboard, Angel, or WebCT learning systems make it easy for instructors to track students' progress. Discussion threads, chat rooms, and other communications tools help foster a lively online classroom where students can collaborate with each other and stay in touch with the instructor. Learning objectives are clearly stated at the beginning of each lesson, and revisited in case students need remediation on any topic. Ethical, legal, and communication-related considerations are raised where appropriate, demonstrating how these considerations arise in many contexts and help students decide the best course of action in any given situation. Engaging Training Activities cover key curriculum competencies, guiding students through how to perform each skill and then encouraging themto try the skill on their own. Self-comprehension questions and learning activities interspersed throughout allow students to check their comprehension and learn from feedback. Self-evaluation checklists at the end of each lesson review the objectives and let students check off items they've mastered. Pop-up boxes introduce further explanations, forms, or oversize figures, enabling students to "dig deeper" or see the paperwork actually used on the job. Automatically scored quizzes and exams allow students to evaluate their comprehension and check their grade at any time during their progress through the course. A glossary of definitions with audio pronunciations is linked to the appearance of each term in the online content, providing correct definitions of terms in context. "Lounge Talk" with students' supervisor/mentor after completing each lesson provides the chance to review material encountered on the job.