Cyber Diversity - online instruction

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 10, 1998 by Ronald Roach

"It's a very demanding task to prepare," says Eke who is a native of Nigeria. "It has required a lot of sacrifices."

Coordination between teaching partners represents a critical part of course preparation, according to Eke and others. Partners have to devise a teaching format, which involves heavily scripted lectures and moderated class discussions, a grading plan, and developing a comfort level for working in front of the camera.

In the first teaching year, sociology professors Dr. Robert Newby at CMU and Dr. Thomas Knight at UAPB, teamed up to teach "Social Problems." Williams of UAPB and Eke, both of whom are Black and teach literature on their respective campuses, taught African American Literature. The four faculty members spent a year planning the course before they offered it on their campuses.

"It took a lot of time to work out the details," Beere says.

Social Problems and African American literature were the maiden courses because they had content directly related to race in America. It was felt those courses had the greatest potential for sparking serious debates and discussions around which the clash of faculty and student perspectives would prove most beneficial.

Newby believes that it was beneficial that CMU had Black professors leading the launch of the BCTT project.

"We were very sensitive to the fact that we were dealing with a Black institution. I think there was more trust [between the institutions] at the beginning because we were Black," Newby added.

Subsequent courses, which include criminology and psychology for the current school year, have a more subtle connection to race. Courses in college algebra and marketing are also scheduled for the project.

Beere says the greatest challenge for the faculty, all of whom are volunteers, has been their lack of experience with team teaching and using distance education technology.

Dr. Bryan Gibson, an associate professor of psychology at CMU, did not let the prospect of the extra work and a lack of familiarity with distance education scare him away from joining the collaboration. Gibson is teaching the introductory psychology course with UAPB's Dr. Ebo Tei. He says the project attracted him because as a social psychologist, he is interested in how contact between Blacks and Whites can improve relations and lessen misunderstandings between them.

"I've been exploring my curiosity about how models of interaction can affect relations between different groups," Gibson says.

Dr. Tei, chairperson of the department of social and behavioral sciences at UAPB, says the opportunity to learn teaching in a distance education format represented one he found hard to pass up.

"This project is part of the movement of technology into the classroom. I believe in moving ahead with technology that will enhance teaching and learning," Tei says.

The program has an Internet component, which encourages students to use e-mail in their courses. Use of the Internet has not developed as fully as some believe it could. The Internet is expected to be used for communication among students working on joint assignments as well as for communication between students and faculty at both universities.