THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503190021
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
Regent University could have gone high-tech with its distance-education program. But it's taken the old-fashioned route - cassette tapes.
``There's no barrier to entry,'' said Bruce Winston, the associate business dean who runs it. ``Everybody in the United States has a tape recorder or can easily purchase one. What we're trying to strive for is education anytime, anywhere.''
Regent, a Christian graduate school, began offering master's degrees in business by audiotape in 1991. Now, it has 130 off-site students, slightly more than in the M.B.A. program on campus. Two-thirds of the distance students live outside Virginia, from as far away as California.
Tuition is no different from the standard rate, about $9,000 a year.
Tom Martin, a train engineer from Knoxville, Tenn., sometimes listens to the lectures in hotel rooms, in between train runs. Sometimes, he'll put on his Walkman in the train when it's waiting to reroute. ``It's great,'' he said. ``If there's something I don't understand, I can hit rewind.''
Students say professors are quick to respond to phone messages. ``The professors have been more accessible to me than many of the professors I had at the University of Tennessee,'' Martin said.
Like students in Old Dominion University's Teletechnet, Regent's long-distance students say the program demands discipline. ``It takes a particular type of person to work independently,'' said another student, Patricia Lawrence, a business application specialist with Options Mental Health in Norfolk.
Students are required to visit the campus twice before they graduate, for seminars and projects. And during classes, they sometimes talk to one another via conference calls.
But Martin says he would like more contact. ``I don't have a group to work through a case study,'' he said. ``I miss that part.'' MEMO: Main story on page A1 and related story on page A10.
KEYWORDS: OFF-CAMPUS COURSE DISTANCE EDUCATION by CNB