Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 17, 1992 TAG: 9202170090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
TV CLASSES GET HIGH RATINGS
Every Wednesday about 6 p.m., Sandy Reynolds seats herself near the front of Room 120 at the Roanoke Valley Graduate Center in downtown Roanoke.The chairs around her fill quickly with about 20 people who, like Reynolds, are pursuing a master's degree in business administration from Virginia Tech.
Moments later, four ceiling-mounted television monitors flicker on. Professor Larry Moore appears on screen. The class settles in for three hours of management science education, courtesy of satellite transmission.
To Moore, all students except the 20 seated around him in a studio classroom at Virginia Tech are little more than occasional voices. He can't see the students in Roanoke or the 16 others tuned in from far-off points in Wise, Covington, Hampton Roads, Fredericksburg, South Boston and Abingdon.
Moore relies only on microphones positioned at students' desks as a means of communication.
Welcome to "distance education," where course instruction ricochets across the state by satellite transmission, blurring institutional boundaries.
"When I first enrolled, I had serious reservations about the idea," Reynolds said. "But once you take one course, you get used to not having a person there physically."
The concept has come a long way from the days of "Sunrise Semester," a morning adult-education television series that aired in the 1960s.
The new education by television uses methods foreign to the technology of 30 years ago. Today's televised education transmits classroom instruction to a satellite orbiting about 25,000 miles above the Earth, then back to designated academic sites.
"The idea of television as a delivery mode has been around for a long time," said Douglas Strickland, graduate center director. "But the advancement in this technology, shooting a signal off a site and bringing it into a certain location, has made distance learning very attractive."
The concept is especially attractive to the working professionals who can't simply abandon their jobs to pursue graduate degrees as full-time students. One in four U.S. college students is 30 or older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many are professionals wanting an advanced degree.
"It's tremendously convenient for people who work," said Reynolds, a purchasing supervisor for Norfolk Southern Corp. in Roanoke. "I travel about once a month. When I've been out of town, I go pick up a VCR tape, get the lecture and watch it at home."
Tech's offering of an MBA degree program via televised instruction is a reasonable alternative to driving to Blacksburg, said Jake Mays, an accountant for Crest Uniform in Salem.
"You get just as much good-quality education and it's much more flexible," he said.
The Wall Street Journal last year estimated distance education enrollment in the high six figures nationwide. A good number are enrolled in televised graduate courses at Roanoke's graduate center, a 3-year-old facility that has physically pooled the resources of as many as six Virginia colleges and universities.
The Virginia Cooperative Graduate Engineering Program beams course instruction to about 30 sites in Virginia, Alabama, Iowa, Maryland, New York, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
Tech, the University of Virginia, Old Dominion University and Virginia Commonwealth University transmit courses each semester by satellite to the academic sites. Those sites include classrooms in industrial locations, like General Electric in Salem, IBM and Reynolds Aluminum.
Tight economic conditions have almost necessitated a sharing of resources for colleges and universities. Distance education is certainly more efficient than putting up buildings at each location, Moore said.
"If you look at all the small locations, no way could you get by on any other means than the way we're doing this," he said. "It's more expensive than offering courses on campus but less expensive than building."
But what is the future of such programs when the state funding that helped launch them is dwindling?
Cuts have hampered their expansion, said Susan Trulove, Tech's information director for research and graduate studies. Resources aren't available to increase air time and meet demands to broadcast courses, she said.
"Our College of Education has a demand for their courses to be broadcast," Trulove said. "Our engineering program could provide more courses; so could the MBA. But there is simply no more funding."
There appears to be no shortage of instructors willing to throw themselves into what some say can be a restrictive, exhausting method of teaching.
"It's a highly visible situation that requires a change in teaching style," said Ben Blanchard, a Tech engineering professor. "You don't quite have the flexibility."
Of the 275 faculty in Tech's engineering department, 87 have taught televised courses, said Blanchard, who has taught eight courses. Twenty-three of the 87 have taught more than one course. Some will never want to teach a televised course again, he said.
Like Moore. He finds it "a little bit disconcerting" to lecture to a television camera, speaking to students he can't see.
"You hear voices, but you never see them," Moore said.
Teaching "Computer Based DEC Sup Systems" on television this semester is a first for Moore. He spends 40 to 50 hours a week preparing for one three-hour class. Instructors who teach by television are limited to one class a week per semester, he said.
"When I heard people teaching distance classes only taught one class, I thought it was ridiculous," Moore said. "Now I would trade for two regular classes a week."
"I thought it would be an interesting and exciting thing to do. It is. But it's also very frustrating," he said.
Something as simple as giving homework assignments becomes a logistical feat. Homework usually comes dribbling in literally for weeks - "tons" of it by overnight mail, Moore said.
"What does a due date mean?" Moore asked. "Does it mean the date it's supposed to be in my office? Does it mean postmarked? The date it's turned into the site?"
But the teaching method is said to attract a better faculty, those more willing to experiment and restructure.
"I think we've had some of the best faculty," Reynolds said. "We've had some pretty major-league players. Those kinds of faculty members are more comfortable taking a step out of the ordinary and trying something new."
Blanchard agrees.
"Let me put it this way: You don't want to put everyone on TV."