NYU uses Lotus Notes to reengineer post-graduate studies
Is it possible to create a college, a curriculum, or even a student cafe entirely in cyberspace? Absolutely. The School of Continuing Education at New York University (New York, NY) has done just that, through a program that builds on Windows, NetWare, Lotus Notes, ISDN, and Indeo digital video.
Begun in 1992, the
NYU Virtual College
offers a small number of courses taught entirely in virtual classrooms. Each student owns a Windows-capable PC and modem. Through Notes servers accessed via toll-free dial-in lines, students receive electronic ``lectures'' that are delivered as multimedia presentations, obtain required course readi
ngs, contribute to discussion topics, and send E-mail to one another and the instructor. Participation in the program costs about $2000 per course.
Currently, the Virtual College is used mainly for midcareer training. ``We needed to get away from the model of flying people to a place, putting them up in a hotel, and all the costs and lost productivity that go with it,'' says Dr.
Richard Vigilante
, head of the program. ``Not to mention the problem of compressing into days something that might be better absorbed over weeks,'' he adds. Scheduled classes are especially impractical for busy mid- and senior-level executives who travel a lot; the Virtual College lets them ``attend'' classes anytime and anywhere, within the confines of the semester.
The program has an additional attribute that bears heavily on its success: The subject matter of the courses consists of applied IS (information systems) and virtual workgroups, so students are gaining not only theoretical knowledge of t
he topic but also practical, hands-on experience. Completing 16 course credits earns a student an advanced professional certificate, and an additional 16 credits of traditional graduate course work is enough for a master's degree in performance and IS auditing. ``The students are using the very technologies [that] they may be implementing in their companies,'' says Rembert Aranda, a Virtual College faculty member.
Aranda says that the most surprising result of the program to date has been its effect on student participation. The amount of interaction among students, and between students and instructors, is an order of magnitude higher than that of a normal classroom, he notes. This is measured by observing how many questions students ask and the liveliness of the discussion threads. But it's possible that E-mail and BBS postings are merely filling in for the lack of face-to-face contact.
Crucial Differences
Distance learning and learning on demand aren't new concepts. What
makes NYU's Virtual College different from earlier, TV-based classes is its flat hierarchy, communications symmetry, and participatory nature.
Conventional televised courses, some of which offer remote students the ability to dial in for audio feedback, tend to penalize remote learners in favor of those present in the classroom. At the Virtual College, ``everybody, even the teacher, attends the class on the same terms,'' Aranda says. And whereas night-school courses are available only to those who live nearby and have the time to attend, the Virtual College can draw students and instructors from anywhere. ``You can get the very best people, regardless of time or space,'' Aranda says.
This spring, the Virtual College will inaugurate its first course to use digital video and new Video for Notes software from Lotus. Participating students will be given local ISDN service and loaned ISDN equipment; the video clips, compressed using Intel's Smart Video Recorder, can be viewed in real time (in quarte
r-screen size at 15 frames per second) or pumped across the wire for local storage and viewing.
``A lot of corporate training materials are already on video, and we wanted to tap into that,'' Vigilante says. However, video courses typically need reworking (e.g., the addition of hypertext links or supplementary text) to succeed as interactive tools. Doing so ``makes them less lecture-like and more seminar-like,'' Vigilante adds.
Aranda and Vigilante acknowledge that the Virtual College works partly because the students are highly motivated. But both are convinced that it's a model with enormous potential for lifelong learning. ``We had a sense that the cost of education, expressed in price/performance terms, hadn't been improving at the same rate as computers and telecommunications,'' Aranda says. Now that NYU has ``reengineered'' the classroom, he adds, ``the degree of freedom is fantastic.''
Organization:
New York University
Technologies:
Collaborative software;
E-mail; digital video
Success factors:
Customized curriculum; motivated students
Effects:
Anytime/anyplace learning; high levels of interaction
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Virtual College program head Richard Vigilante.
screen_link (25 Kbytes)
NYU's Virtual College uses threaded Lotus Notes conferences for interactive ``discussions''.
Building the Virtual College
