2008 Woodie Awards
Distance learning 'wave of future'
Rose Eikler
Issue date: 10/10/08 Section: News
Originally published: 10/9/08 at 7:29 PM EST
Last update: 10/9/08 at 7:26 PM EST
A new form of learning was brought into Sibley Hall 416 so students at the branch campus in Glens Falls could interact with students at Plattsburgh State and learn with them each day.
The classroom has large screens in the front and in the back so the teacher can display his or her lecture, which is broadcasted to the students in the branch campus, said Holly Heller-Ross, interim associate dean of Library and Information Services.
Video conferencing, which first started in 1995 with the nursing program, lets students from PSUC's branch campus enter into the classrooms at PSUC.
The screens allow students and teachers to see each other and interact; the students can raise their hands and answer questions within the classroom along with the students at the other campus.
"The other day in class, they all had to do diagrams to show how they would evaluate a certain program," said Ellen Fitzpatrick, a professor of program evalutation and grant writing at PSUC. "The students in Glens Falls could put it on their white boards and we could see it in Plattsburgh."
The advancements of such a classroom bring together a combination of Web-based classes and regular classes with teacher interaction.
"We hire a site technician in each classroom," Heller-Ross said. These individuals manage the equipment and dial up connection, are in charge of changing the video display and receive faxes for the teacher.
In the back of the each classroom is a fax that enables students at the Glens Falls campus to hand in their work and teachers to fax assignments to them. "The technology is very valuable," Fitzpatrick said.
Each desk has a microphone for the students to speak to the teacher.
"I can hear them whispering to each other," Fitzpatrick said. In this way, she can hear what is going on within the classroom from a distance compared to a normal classroom.
She also said that in the beginning many students are uncomfortable being in front of the camera but this goes away in time and it is just as in any other classroom, though she said some aspects of this type of classroom are more complicated.
The classroom has large screens in the front and in the back so the teacher can display his or her lecture, which is broadcasted to the students in the branch campus, said Holly Heller-Ross, interim associate dean of Library and Information Services.
Video conferencing, which first started in 1995 with the nursing program, lets students from PSUC's branch campus enter into the classrooms at PSUC.
The screens allow students and teachers to see each other and interact; the students can raise their hands and answer questions within the classroom along with the students at the other campus.
"The other day in class, they all had to do diagrams to show how they would evaluate a certain program," said Ellen Fitzpatrick, a professor of program evalutation and grant writing at PSUC. "The students in Glens Falls could put it on their white boards and we could see it in Plattsburgh."
The advancements of such a classroom bring together a combination of Web-based classes and regular classes with teacher interaction.
"We hire a site technician in each classroom," Heller-Ross said. These individuals manage the equipment and dial up connection, are in charge of changing the video display and receive faxes for the teacher.
In the back of the each classroom is a fax that enables students at the Glens Falls campus to hand in their work and teachers to fax assignments to them. "The technology is very valuable," Fitzpatrick said.
Each desk has a microphone for the students to speak to the teacher.
"I can hear them whispering to each other," Fitzpatrick said. In this way, she can hear what is going on within the classroom from a distance compared to a normal classroom.
She also said that in the beginning many students are uncomfortable being in front of the camera but this goes away in time and it is just as in any other classroom, though she said some aspects of this type of classroom are more complicated.
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