Community College Lures Distance Learners

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Topics: Education, Other
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Cuyahoga Community College is ready for students who either can't or don't want to spend their days on campus. ideastream®'s Kymberli Hagelberg has a report on some of the high-tech educational tools the school will use to serve distance learners.

Skip class at Tri C this fall and your professor just might show up on your cell phone.

KRUEGER: “Often instructors would like to send messages to remind them we have a speaker next week, we have homework due”

That’s instructor Jan Krueger demonstrating how she’ll use new text and web enabled tools to keep track of students in her court-reporting class, the first Tri-C class to be offered completely online.

KRUEGER: “Just because I don’t see their faces, they’re not invisible to me.”

The school bought an assortment of new classroom gadgetry with a $25,000 grant from AT&T. Real time video and podcasts will be used for hybrid classes courses that mix in person and and online classes, and students will be able to dial up a web tutor for some extra help or catch a lecture on re-run to study for a test. Online, hybrid and on-campuses courses will cost the same.

Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3