Schools get virtual

University Business, June, 2005 by Elizabeth Crane

New flexible collaboration tools can enable a better student-instructor distance learning experience.

Capitol College was in the distance learning business long before it became an ubiquitous phrase. Founded in 1927 as a correspondence college, Capitol now has about 600 undergraduate students on its campus in Laurel, Md., and 600 online students every semester earning their master's degrees in engineering, computer science, information technologies or business.

In the 90s, courses were delivered via satellite videoconferencing, but this didn't offer the kind of breadth Capitol felt it could achieve using the internet, says Dianne Veenstra, vice president of Information and Outcomes Assessment at Capitol. "We had a home-grown [web-based] system in place, and that gave us an advantage over our competitors," she says, but the system wasn't sufficiently robust. Danielle Safe, director of Online Learning Support, could only run one or two classes per night. "Capitol had experienced too much growth, the old system couldn't keep pace. Centra offered us the capability to do as many as ten multiple simultaneous classes a night."

When the college went looking for a new delivery method, Centra Software's (www.centra.com) Centra 7 collaboration system fit the bill Capitol implemented the Centra software in spring 2002. "We were committed to using voiceover IP. It's what we had and what we wanted to keep," Veenstra says. The internet interface is "ubiquitous and familiar" to their student population, making it the logical choice to reach the greatest number of students.

Demand for Capitol's master's in network security degree spiked after 9/11, making the expansion even more necessary, Veenstra says, and enrollment still shows a steady increase.

A typical class is comprised of eight live sessions and eight asynchronous units that enhance what the students have learned in class. Classes average ten students, with no more than 25 allowed to enroll in a single course. This small class size maximizes the interaction possible and keeps the quality of the class experience high. "We're a small college," says Veenstra. "We pride ourselves on being small We're not going to change that in the online environment."

With Centra handling the server maintenance, IT hours for Safe and her department are drastically reduced. "We had expected to do that ourselves," she says, but "when you're a small organization you're better off letting the trained professionals handle the big stuff." Her department deals with the clean-up aspects of the process, taking down older recordings after a certain date and generally keeping things tidy. And because Centra works well on a dial-up connection--was designed that way, in fact--there are no issues with students who don't have broadband access. As Capitol adds video features and undergraduate courses to its online offerings, that may need to change. Centra will be rotting out higher bit-rate audio, more video options, multiple video windows, and webcams to take advantage of what broadband can often

Unlike many distance learning courses, the bulk of Capitol's programs are not available anytime, anywhere. Students are expected to "show up" for class by logging in at the designated time. This method allows for real-time interaction between the professor and student as welt as collaboration between students. Class presentations are given from remote locations, PowerPoint slides can be uploaded on the fly, and student groups can brainstorm ideas on a virtual whiteboard. In the asynchronous portion of the course, students use Blackboard (www.blackboard.com) to access assignments, view the course syllabus and instructor information, check up on their grades, take online tests, interact with classmates through the discussion board, use file sharing and chat sessions, and participate in groups. Recorded classes are made available to people who've missed a class in the same way that lecture notes might be shared with a student who missed a class. Even students who attended class can refer back to the recording to refresh their memories and study for exams. "You feel like you're in a class," Veenstra says. The idea, as Veenstra would have it, is to mirror the classroom environment without requiring students to travel to the campus--except for graduation. That happens only on campus.

THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE

As web-based learning grows more and more ubiquitous, the question has to be asked, how does the use of these tools change what students experience as "higher education"? "People come to us with a conception of what online education is," says Veenstra, "but [the way we're doing this] is completely different from other online classes." Veenstra insists that the students "know" their classmates and professors by voice if not by face, and that the experience of attending and interacting within these classes is no less rich than in a classroom environment.

Perhaps the subject matter makes a difference. Capitol College classes are geared toward technology, science, and business, not a liberal arts curriculum. Susan Crane, a history professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, feels strongly that, in her discipline, distance learning should not displace conventional classroom instruction. For her students, "interaction, spontaneity, and discussion all take place in the classroom in ways which I don't believe can be duplicated online."