Telecourses Change Channels

They lack the hype of online courses, but they may educate more people, and they are embracing the Internet

By DAN CARNEVALE and JEFFREY R. YOUNG

A professor poses a simple question to his sociology class: "What is anthropology?" One student in the classroom

ALSO SEE: PBS Sticks to Its Strategy for Telecourses, Unafraid of Competition From the Internet Educators Are Unlikely to Lose Their Broadcast Frequencies High-Definition Television Could Change Telecourses and Online Learning Join a live, online discussion with George P. Connick, a consultant for distance-education ventures, about the future of telecourses, on Thursday, July 12, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time.

offers a brief answer, but the professor wants more. After an awkward silence, a faraway voice pipes up over a sound system with an answer: "The study of cultures and their environment?"

The disembodied voice belongs to a student watching the course live on television from a classroom 43 miles away. The professor, Jon A. Schlenker, prompts the student for more information, and they have a short back-and-forth about race, environment, and social interactions. The student is taking the course with several others at a University of Maine academic center in Thomaston, where they pass a cordless telephone around the room to interact with Mr. Schlenker.

Although those students could take a similar course elsewhere -- in a traditional classroom or on the Internet -- they have chosen what others think of as an old-fashioned form of distance learning: televised courses, or telecourses.

Telecourses do not often make headlines these days, but they are still a major form of distance education. In fact, enrollment in televised courses continues to grow, though at a much slower rate than enrollment in sexy new online courses.

Some experts estimate that more people take courses each year delivered by television -- whether via interactive video networks, videocassettes, or cable or broadcast television -- than take courses on the Internet. For a student who doesn't own a computer or who doesn't feel comfortable using one, television remains a powerful way to take courses at a distance.

And many telecourse producers are rapidly incorporating new technologies, including high-speed data networks, online discussions, and digital videodisks, or DVD's. Many telecourses are taking advantage of the Internet to allow interactions between students and instructors. And as faster Internet connections permit video to travel freely across computer networks, video segments created for telecourses may find their way into a variety of online courses.

The notion of televised college courses dates to the earliest days of television itself. In fact, many educators viewed early television technology with the same enthusiasm that the Internet inspires among today's education visionaries.

But since the 1950's, a variety of high-profile experiments in televised education have come and gone. In its Sunrise Semester, which began in 1957 and ran for nearly 25 years, CBS broadcast university lectures in the early morning, before its regular programming began. Mind Extension University, founded in 1987 and closed several years later, provided college credit for courses broadcast over cable television.

"People said, 'The world will never be the same,'" says John P. Witherspoon, a senior adviser for the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications. "It hasn't lived up to what some of the more wide-eyed people said at the very beginning."

Televised college courses have had a greater impact in many other countries than in the United States. Britain's Open University, for instance, has offered distance-education courses primarily by television for nearly 30 years, and it is now the largest university in that country. And the China Central Radio and Television University boasts 1.5 million students for its courses.

In the United States, television is now seen by some distance-learning officials as part of an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, step in the growth of high-tech distance education. And some distance-education leaders say the latest wave of online universities has much to learn from telecourse providers.

"Those institutions who have been working with telecourses for 15 to 20 years are ones who are positioned to work very well in any kind of delivery format," says Sally M. Johnstone, executive director of the Western Cooperative. "They've had to create systems to allow students to have greater flexibility with how they interact with all the campus resources."

Telecourses come in two major forms, documentary and interactive.

The documentary model centers on a series of documentary-style video productions -- usually 26 segments of a half-hour each. Students who enroll in such telecourses, through an accredited college, are asked to watch the programs and read recommended textbooks and workbooks. Colleges that deliver and grant credit for those telecourses generally assign an instructor to manage each course and to grade assignments and examinations. Tuition is typically the same as classroom-based courses, although telecourse students may have extra technology charges or videotape-rental fees.

The video segments can be delivered in many ways: Some colleges broadcast them on their own cable or satellite networks, others make videotapes available in their libraries, and still others work with private companies that rent tapes to students through the mail.

Many prerecorded telecourses are developed by teams, which can include professors, instructional designers, and video producers and editors. The courses often cost more than $1-million to produce.

Because of that expense, few colleges create documentary telecourses on their own. Instead, colleges license prerecorded telecourses from a handful of producers.

One of those producers is the R. Jan LeCroy Center for Educational Telecommunications, part of the Dallas County Community College District. The center has several studios, and a prop room filled with fake library shelves and an assortment of items used in previous course segments. However, much of the footage for the courses is filmed on location -- often at the workplaces of experts who are interviewed for the segments. Each year, the center produces one or two courses, which are taken by thousands of students all over the United States.

The long life span of the courses -- which can remain on the air for more than 10 years before they are retired -- has led some to criticize telecourses as dated and crudely produced.

"If you watch them, there are a lot of people wearing wide ties and some go-go boots," says Sheila Cadidan, a producer at KCSM, a public-television station in California. "It just looks like a 70's porno movie."

More recent telecourses, however, boast high production values and seem inspired by such popular documentaries as those by Ken Burns.

Courses on some topics, such as health, get new videos more frequently than courses like early American history, says Carl J. Cooper, executive director of the LeCroy Center.

Those producing telecourses for the LeCroy Center are proud of the courses' quality, pointing to the time and effort that go into them. "No traditional course that I'm aware of goes through the rigor to insure the instructional integrity that a telecourse does," says Kenneth G. Alfers, a history professor at Mountain View College who is working as a content specialist for an American-history telecourse. "But you don't have the live interaction, and that's a big trade-off."

The other telecourse model allows students to engage in at least some live interaction with professors. Students in interactive telecourses generally have to show up at a set time in a classroom, but they watch a professor on a screen rather than in person and may ask questions over the telephone.

The University of Maine's system, established in 1989, is one of the most extensive interactive-telecourse programs in the country, offering students about 100 sites where they can participate in live courses. Tuition is about the same as for students in classroom-based courses. In the early 1990's, university leaders stirred controversy when they proposed creating a virtual campus from which students could earn degrees by taking nothing but telecourses. The plan was shelved after faculty members angrily denounced it as a threat to the university -- a prelude to current debates about the appropriate role of online education. The chancellor at the time, J. Michael Orenduff, resigned after the faculty uprising.

Today, the system quietly delivers hundreds of interactive telecourses each year. From the 1997-98 academic year to 2000-1, the number of telecourses offered in the system grew from 216 to 269, while online courses grew from 12 to 142; enrollment in telecourses grew from 11,793 to 14,603, while online enrollments grew from 200 to 3,680. That compares to an enrollment of 32,372 last fall for the entire system. The online program may be growing faster, but the telecourse program is still much larger. Meanwhile, faculty protests have died down, and an increasing number of professors are getting involved in the programs.

The interactive television courses attempt to keep up with the latest video technology. In his sociology course, Mr. Schlenker stands in front of a green curtain during the lecture. His hands are animated, pointing this way and that, as he discusses different cultures and their views on aging.

What the students watching him on television see is completely different. Computerized text and graphics appear around him as he speaks. Mr. Schlenker can watch the additional images on a monitor in front of him, pointing to words and pictures like a meteorologist describing a low-pressure system on the evening news.

A technician sits in a neighboring room watching the professor and controlling when the pictures and text pop up on screen and where the camera is facing. The techie also juggles phone calls from the students at the satellite centers. And when Mr. Schlenker's lecture doesn't require images, the technician gives him an entertaining background, like palm trees and a blue sky.

Students say they like the convenience of the courses. They also like the diversity that comes from enrolling students around the state. "You get to hear a lot more perspectives," says Roxanne Waugh, a business-administration senior at the Augusta campus.

The academic centers where students view the telecourses are on college campuses, in high schools, and in stand-alone facilities that make the broadcasts available in underserved areas. Some academic centers are within 20 minutes of a university, but a number of adult students prefer the centers because they don't feel comfortable venturing back onto a campus: They would rather take courses with their peers at a more convenient location.

Some statewide distance-education efforts now face the question of how much support they should continue giving their telecourse programs at a time when Internet-based courses are in greater demand. "A frequent question around here is video versus Internet," says Susan B. Scott, director of resource development and management for the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System, which coordinates distance-education efforts in the state. "In a time of scarce resources, there are some groups of people who think that the Internet is the future and that all this video stuff is old-fashioned, and that we should be putting our limited resources into the Internet."

Five years ago, the system offered mostly televised courses, but now online courses make up 60 percent of its enrollments. That doesn't mean, however, that fewer people are taking telecourses, says Ms. Scott. "We're continuing to see growth in videotape-based courses as well," she adds, noting that enrollments in those courses have risen from 813 in 1995 to 2,194 in 1999. For now, the system plans to keep its satellite network and other video services going.

But other states have moved away from telecourses. Kentucky Virtual University, which offers a directory and services for distance-education programs in the state, decided not to include telecourses under its umbrella.

"We were really going to focus on the Internet and phase out telecourses," says Mary Beth Susman, who served until recently as chief executive officer of the university. "I think the Internet has so much more richness to it and is so much more interactive than a telecourse." Ms. Susman is now a vice president of the Community Colleges of Colorado.

George P. Connick, who once served as the director of Maine's network and who now works independently to help other institutions with their distance programs, says the future is in the Internet, but that doesn't mean the death of the telecourse. "ITV will remain static," Mr. Connick says, referring to interactive television. "Web education will grow enormously."

Most colleges that are just now starting distance-education programs look to the Internet rather than television, says Mr. Connick, in part because television systems are generally more costly than online networks. "If you didn't do these things in the 70's and 80's, the cost now is so expensive," he says. "But the Web's already there."

New high-speed computer networks seem certain to blur the line between telecourses and online courses, however. Most telecourse providers are experimenting with what they call "teleweb" courses, which incorporate existing telecourse footage with interactive assignments, Web resources, and online-discussion areas. In many teleweb courses, the video segments are still distributed via videotape -- or on DVD or CD-ROM -- rather than over the Internet, because the video cannot be delivered clearly over standard modem connections. But some colleges say the ideal is for all of the material to be integrated online.

The Seattle Community College District has already begun sending telecourse videos over high-speed research networks run by universities that are members of Internet2. As part of a pilot project, the colleges are delivering the signals from their educational cable-television station over the Internet in three versions -- one for modems, one for Internet2, and one for broadband connections such as Ethernet or digital subscriber lines.

For now, the Webcasts benefit students who do not have cable television, or who prefer to watch the telecourses on a computer. The college system hopes to soon include an online archive of all the programming, so that students can see any segment anytime they want. "We're working toward a video-on-demand system," says Ross Davis, general manager of television and cable operations for the community-college district.

Colleges producing high-end online courses are also exploring ways to add more video segments to their courses.

James Breece, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs at Maine, says the future of distance education will definitely involve telecourses. The difficult part will be to find the right mix of investment in online education and telecourses.

Although the telecourse is old technology, too many students depend on it for the university to give it up. "Some people might say that it's aged," says Mr. Breece. "But it's dependable and cost-effective."

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