Driven by the need to save time and money, university professors
across the nation are looking for ways to adapt the educational
process with new resources. Technologies such as video lectures and
Internet broadcasts are making traditional lectures more accessible
to students.

One of the newest technological developments at the University
is Physics 522/644, a graduate-level course in advanced atomic
physics. The class is taught in tandem by physics Profs. Chris
Monroe and Daniel Heinzen of the University of Texas in Austin. The
class meets twice a week in Austin and Ann Arbor, and both
professors teach once a week.

The class is delivered through the Frontiers in Optical Coherent
and Ultrafast Science program and is broadcasted over the Internet.
When Monroe teaches in Ann Arbor, the lecture is broadcast to the
students in Austin and the same method applies when Heinzen teaches
from Austin. By jointly teaching this class, Monroe and
Heinzen’s students learn the information in a broader and
more diverse process.

Cedric Fricke, professor emeritus at the University of
Michigan’s Dearborn campus, used video lectures for his
finance and business forecasting courses as early as 1979. Fricke
began teaching with video after a colleague received a grant for a
television camera. “I went to the dean and told him that with
video, I could teach five sections instead of three and generate
twice as much student credit hours as other faculty, and do it in
one day a week,” Fricke said.

“What I did in my day was archaic, and with the new
technology today, you could not only cut tuition costs but save
taxpayers’ money,” Fricke said. “The time that
students and faculty would save means a lot for the higher
education budget in the state of Michigan. No one cares that we are
wasting $200 million a year.”

Fricke seeks to implement the alternative teaching system he
used in the past but with the modern technology. “With my
system, the material was more organized and compact, and increased
the output 25-40 percent, we also were able to present the same
material to twice as many students,” he said.

Prompted by increased enrollment in fall term 1999 and winter
term 2000, Profs. Christopher Peterson and Ann Merriwether taught
Psychology 111 partly through televised lecture. The professors
were then able to devote more time to their office hours and
additional sections.

“I think as the bugs are worked out, this might be a wave
of the future for big enrollment courses,” Peterson said.

With the addition of the video section, enrollment was increased
to 600 out of the 1,300 total enrolled in the class in fall 1999.
The lecture was broadcast on a University television channel, and
transcripts were kept for a few weeks in the Modern Languages
Building.

“One of the reasons people say systems like this
don’t work is because after the lecture is given that they
destroy the tape,” Fricke said. “The students love it
because it gives them flexibility. They can see the lecture any
time they want and as many times as they want.”

But some freshmen disagreed.

“Lecture is boring enough as it is, someone on video
talking could be worse,” LSA sophomore Derek Clarkson said.
“Already we’ve gone so far with the Internet, and today
the use of something like Course Tools is a big step in education.
I think if we don’t move with technology, it’s a
shame.”

Also at the University, IBM is teaming up with the Business
School to collect all the school’s “digital
assets” into a broader catalogue. These digital resources
include tapes of conferences, students interviewing managers after
internships and professors lecturing on specific concepts.

Edward Adams, Director of Computing at the Business School, said
he hopes to compile these resources into a “digital course
pack” for professors. Next semester, the Business School will
be conducting an experiment where four faculty in the MBA program
will use these digital resources on the Course Tools
website.“The trend that we’re seeing is that digital is
just the next step in technology,” Adams said.