Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9408250078
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV14 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
It opened a satellite center in Christiansburg this week in the former Appalachian Power Co. building on Roanoke Street.
Classes in places other than the main campus at Dublin are nothing new for NRCC. Faculty members have taught courses in local schools, industries, child-care centers, police departments and elsewhere. But the Roanoke Street center is the only site being leased by the college.
"We'll have faculty going over there and teaching this semester," said Tom Wilkinson, director of distance education and learning resources.
The site almost will be a miniature campus. It will offer accounting, computer science, English, mathematics, philosophy, sociology, Spanish and three- to five-week computer courses.
It will start with about 25 independent and distance learning courses.
"We'll be offering them seven days a week," Wilkinson said. Spanish, for example, will be taught on Saturday mornings and computer science Sunday afternoons.
"We'll probably go to 35 courses by January," Wilkinson said. The first classes in the renovated building started this week.
Its location will be more convenient than Dublin to students from parts of Montgomery and Floyd counties, Wilkinson said. It also will help students by offering more classes at convenient times.
That especially will help students with jobs or family responsibilities that keep them from attending at more traditional times.
"We are able to break some of those barriers down," he said, "so they don't have to be on campus at a certain day or at a certain time."
The building has one classroom, which seats about 40 students; a small seminar room, which seats about a dozen; and a 24-station computer lab, where courses from three to 15 weeks can be offered on the computers. There could be 24 students studying 24 different courses.
Students also can register at the Roanoke Street center for classes there or on the main campus.
The seminar room will have an interactive TV connection to the Dublin campus, allowing students in that room to sit in on classes being taught at Dublin. They will be able to see and talk to the instructor. Wilkinson said the system eventually will allow the instructor to see the off-campus students as well.
The building has some open areas in the rear that may be renovated later for classes such as electricity, electronics and masonry.
NRCC is becoming a pioneer in distance learning. It is coordinating a consortium with nine other community colleges from Lynchburg west to Big Stone Gap called the Rural Center for Distance Education in partnership with Blue Ridge Public Television.
The college taught its first course over public TV in 1981 and, in 1986, decided to get serious about distance education, Wilkinson said. About 30 students enrolled for telecourses that year. Now there are more than 1,000.
In 1987, the college started putting courses on videotape in area video stores, he said.
"The college's philosophy is to make education accessible."
For the past four years, NRCC has been joined by the nine community colleges in Western Virginia in preparing courses for television. All 10 offer child psychology, the most popular course. They generally are broadcast early in the morning or on Saturday.
Again, these are aimed at the nontraditional student.
"They just do not have time to come Monday through Friday on a particular day at a particular time," Wilkinson said.
Students taking telecourses this year will report to the NRCC campus at 9 a.m. Saturday for an orientation session, to meet their instructors and pick up their course materials. Materials range from books to videotapes, and are distributed in bags to the students.
Wilkinson recalls one student who came in and proclaimed, "I want to take one of those courses in a bag."
by CNB