Over two terms last year, Dave Krauss taught nearly 1,300 students taking a home computing course, but never saw more than a few of them. To do so, he would have had to travel to 46 countries around the world.
The course was taught on the Internet. To attend, students sat down to their computers and typed in the address for the course. Following instructions on the screen, they read, carried out assignments, and turned in their work without leaving their homes.
When they had questions, they asked them by e-mail. Krauss, who directs the Learning Resource Center in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, and his teaching assistants found themselves answering 100 e-mail letters a day.
"For a lot of the questions, I could have simply pasted a canned answer into the e-mail message but I don't like to get mail like that or to send it.
"So, I'd go home and answer e-mail until I couldn't type any longer. Then, I'd get up at four in the morning and answer some more."
That's when Krauss decided to add a "conference center" site, a way of providing interaction similar to that in a traditional classroom. Students began posting questions, receiving answers, and making comments where they could be read by all participants. They even began answering each other's questions.
To Krauss's relief, that cut back on the e-mail volume. "I was doing over 100 a day. That dropped to 100 a week."
For the first two semesters the course was offered for free - one of the main reasons it attracted so many people from so many countries. All Krauss asked for was feedback.
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, demonstrating two points: (1) teaching and learning via the Internet is doable, and (2) there is a worldwide demand for Internet courses.
That was enough for Krauss and the university officials. Last fall, "CSS1 10 became an official course enrolling 100 students on-campus and 400 off-campus. The cost was $420 for a two-credit course and $50 if taken for noncredit. It was offered again in spring term 1997 for to 90 students, and will be available this summer for noncredit. Next fall and spring, it will be offered for both credit and noncredit.
Krauss's course will also impact technical aid to developing countries. Through a $500,000, three-year grant from the Holden Foundation of Detroit, the course will be offered to key instructors at universities in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe as a way of preparing them to participate in additional Internet courses at the graduate level. These courses will be developed by crop and soil sciences faculty utilizing Krauss's experience.
All this activity is covered in the MSU Technology Guarantee announced in November by President Peter McPherson. Part 3 says simply, "MSU will double hours of interactive instruction by fall 1998."
"The university is pioneering development of courseware and interactive Internet instruction that take full advantage of the rich capabilities of electronic media," says Robert L. Church, assistant vice provost for university outreach.
Church and Paul M. Hunt, vice provost for libraries, computing, and technology, are MSU's point persons for coordinating and encouraging such development.
In addition to physically upgrading its computing and Internet capabilities, MSU is following two parallel paths, reports Church.
One is to encourage, abet, and help to fund the development of interactive media courses - and eventually, programs - that will benefit alumni and lifelong learners everywhere. The other approach is to see that on-campus students benefit from and become skilled users of Internet resources while still on the campus.
Church says teaching on the Internet is extremely challenging.
"Going online, where there is no physical contact between the professor and the student or among students, is a giant step. How do you replace the eye contact, the human personality of a good lecture?"
"Of course, you can argue that when you're sitting with 300 other students in a lecture hall, you're not getting much personal attention. On the other hand, a dramatic lecture is different when you're watching at home than when you're sitting with 300 people."
The "Virtual University" isn't virtual. Neither are the students and faculty. Not at Michigan State University. Not in California, where the term originated as a catchy way to describe teaching via the Internet without students setting foot on a physical campus
True, MSU faculty have pioneered a growing number of "virtual classrooms," in which students and teachers come together electronically. And, someday, bricks and mortar may give way to a virtual campus. But a university should not be defined by its buildings and grounds. It is much more. It is a community of scholars, a system for discovering and disseminating knowledge, and a way of partaking of the world.
So, what is called the "virtual university" at MSU is as real as the computers used to navigate the ether and as true to the land-grant tradition as John Hannah himself. Moreover, electronic dialog between students and teachers often approaches the Socratic ideal.
A better term might be "Universal University." It helps meet a universal need. It is available universally. There is a universe of applications for the technology and, while Michigan State Universal University is still limited to the worldwide web, there is no reason it should remain earthbound in the future. If humans someday colonize Mars or even far-flung galaxies, MSUU can be there.
Church believes interactive classes on the Internet have much more potential than previous educational innovations such as programmed learning and television teaching.
"Internet teaching is much more useful because it is much more than a communications device. It is also a way of gathering information. It is probably going to be the research tool of the 21st century.
"For instance, we have a nursing course on the web that sends students to medical archives all over the world to gather information. They may be confronted with a simulated patient with a set of symptoms and they will have to search the web for information on those symptoms, Then they will make decisions based on their search and the computer will tell them the result of those decisions."
Bauer and colleagues Walter Benenson and Gary Westfall in the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory have developed and copyrighted a Lyman Briggs School physics course that is contained on a single CD given to each of the 240 students in the class. Simply by putting the CD in a computer and connecting to the course site on the Internet a student can read lessons, see video clips that demonstrate physical phenomena, take tests, turn in assignments and be graded immediately.
"They can do their homework anywhere in the world as long as they are connected to the Internet with a Macintosh (eventually IBM clones also)," explains Bauer.
"They can see how they're doing, what work has been credited to them. As they do their homework, they know immediately if they have done it right.. If it's correct, the computer uploads. If it isn't the computer tells them, 'Here's a help. Try this.' It may refer them to lecture notes or show a quick-time movie illustrating the point.
"Students can't get the answers from other student because each one has different numbers to work with. They can't get the solutions without going through the steps to get to it. They can ask other students for help and we encourage that because it isn't blind copying.
"The system gives them immediate feedback on their homework and tests and that helps to cement the right solution in their brains. It also saves the teaching assistants a lot of the time they used to spend on grading.
Interaction with the students is vital to the course. At first, Bauer made himself available at home by e-mail on Tuesday nights and averaged 10 letters each time. Now he has added video using a tiny $200 camera atop the computer monitor.
"Students can talk to me face to face and we have a common whiteboard on the screen that we can both write or draw on."
The convenience of the CD format offers many exciting possibilities. Rights to use it have been given to a German company, which has translated it and is offering it for sale at university bookstores. Although German students can't get MSU course credit or faculty interaction without registering and logging in on the Internet, they can use it as they would a supplemental reading text.
CDs could also be used to recruit bright high-school students.
"CDs are cheap, about $4 each, less in large numbers," says Bauer. "So, instead of mailing glossy brochures, send the CDs to high schools and say, 'You can take advanced placement credit at MSU now! Just drop this CD in your computer. Do the reading. Do the homework problems and take a few exams. You can do it all on the Internet from anywhere in the world!"'
Technically, Bauer's course doesn't qualify as a "virtual university" offering because the students met as a class. However, that will change this fall when the course becomes available completely on the Internet and away from campus.
Over in the Department of Telecommunication, "TC 100":
Introduction to Information Society" was offered during spring semester to about 300 students as a regular classroom course and to 40 as a virtual university course.
About 10 of the 40 were working adults living away from campus. Three others were East Lansing high school students and 10 were chosen by the Lansing Housing Commission from low-income families. Many of the others were on-campus students who had difficulty meeting the schedule for the regular class.
"The regular and Internet classes performed equally well," says LaRose.
The course, to be offered again this summer and fall, featured Web pages that enabled students to listen to recordings of the lectures and classroom discussions. They could also see and copy detailed class outlines and find links to illustrative material on the Web. They responded to classroom questions, took exams, and got feedback from their instructor, all over the Internet. The course is available to alumni.
One of them is Physics 861, a spring semester telecourse on the physics of accelerator beams. It is probably the largest 800 level physics course ever taught at MSU or elsewhere. Although only briefly advertised via e-mail, the spring term course enrolled nearly 100 people at major laboratories in eight countries, including China, Russia, and India.
The reason for its popularity is that the subject is taught only at MSU and four other universities but is of special interest to many people working at accelerator laboratories.
Although about half of the enrollees are graduate students, many have Ph.D. degrees and some are older than Martin Berz, the MSU physicist who organized the course.
One benefit of this kind of instruction is anonymity, says Berz. Prominent scientists who would hesitate to participate with comparative youngsters in a physical classroom don't mind doing so in a virtual classroom.
The course originates from the Physics and Astronomy Building on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 to 11 a.m., EST and is picked up at teleconferencing facilities at the participating laboratories. If participants on the opposite side of the world don't want to get out of bed to view it, they can pick up the audio portion on the Internet.
Lecture notes and other material about the course are regularly posted on the course's Internet home page. Homework is graded instantly by a computer that rejects wrong answers.
One difficulty was keeping up with the 1,500 e-mail queries that Berz and three assistants answered in just the first three months of the semester He is trying to cut down on the volume without cutting off the students by posting questions and answers on the home page.
"The experience has been fun," says Berz. "It's the wave of the future but it is also very demanding and you can't watch class reactions as you lecture. It means changing the way you teach as you adjust to the technology"
Another graduate effort is an established educational administration course, "The Concept of a Learning Society." It was offered on the Internet for the first time last summer and fall and is to be offered again this fall.
Taught by Rhonda Egidio, EAD 860 was designed for working educators, who are less apt to have computer/web skills than today's college students. The 17 students who registered in the summer and 24 who signed up in the fall were given the option of also attending three Saturday sessions on the campus. Most of them did.
However, all of the course material and completed assignments were communicated by e-mail and the Internet.
Some of the participants found mastering the technology difficult at first. In the course evaluations, one student said the least-liked thing about the class was that, "I was not prepared for the on-line aspects and spent an inordinate amount of time (up front 2-3wks) understanding what to do."
Most other students, however, were very positive about the electronic aspects. One said the best-liked thing was that, "I was forced on line (kicking and screaming. . .). Other comments:
Interesting, challenging, different - a nice break from 10 years of "normal" classroom learning.
"This was excellent - I felt more involved and had more control over my learning."
"At first I didn't want any part of it but as the semester progressed I really began to enjoy it - my understanding of technology has greatly increased!"
Several others said they like being able to study at their own pace. "It was great to be able to arrange my work in the class around my schedule - not the school's."
J.T. (Tim) Stocks had a similar experience during spring semester with Social Work 830, an introduction to research methods for people starting out on a master of social work program. Most of 26 students were employed off campus.
Stocks finds Internet teaching challenging and says there are advantages to using e-mail to receive and respond to student questions.
"It's more thoughtful because you write your answers rather than reply immediately and impetuously."
Just as they have traditionally learned to read, write, study, use libraries, and take tests, while studying economics, physics, and English, they now need to do word processing, make spreadsheets, send e-mail messages, and access the Internet.
On today's campus, a student who isn't using computers and getting at least a taste of the Internet is like a '70s student not using the library. They have to work to avoid it. Moreover, MSU policy is to encourage use of the Internet so students will be able to use it to continue their education after they graduate.
For example, a professor might deliver assignments, post grades and make special announcements via a home page web site. Instead of looking on a thumbtacked bulletin board, the student uses a computer to access the instructor's home page. Sometimes assignments can be turned in and even graded that way.
If a student has a question for the instructor, there is no need to wait for regular office hours or a quick moment after class. E-mail often works better, takes less time, and provides a written reminder. And if the instructor makes assignments to project teams, the students can work together via e-mail.
"The idea," says Church, "is to introduce technology on campus so that students learn their course material better and also learn about using communications technology."
High-tech multi-media classrooms add another dimension. These are equipped with an MSU-designed, custom-built multi-media cart containing a computer (Pentium or Macintosh) and a VCR. An LCD video-data projector built into the ceiling throws sharp images on a large screen. A special lighting and room-darkening system give the instructor easy control over the light level in the room.
In these classrooms, instructors can readily access the Internet and project images from it to the front screen, show a videotape, play a CD, and project charts and texts from their own computers.
After so much virtual education, perhaps you may want to follow the trend, give up your low-tech brown bags, and embark on a virtual lunch. (Martin Berz)