Internet Initiative a Success

Distance Education Course Rebroadcast in Spring

What do these Extension School students have in common?

• A husband and wife are interested in continuing their education, but have childcare responsibilities that prevent them from commuting to Harvard most evenings.
• A salesman has a schedule that frequently takes him out of town.
• A network manager works at a California hospital.
• A gentleman needs to return home to Sweden several weeks before his course ends.
• A young woman has to travel to Israel for six weeks in the middle of the term.

Each of these individuals was able to successfully complete Leonard Evenchik's course, CSCI E-131b Communication Protocols and Internet Architectures, this fall, thanks to the Extension School's distance education initiative. Through this program, weekly lectures of certain courses are recorded and made available online to students anywhere in the world, generally within 24 hours of the regular class meeting, using streaming video and audio technology. The lectures can be seen on demand using a World Wide Web browser from where ever there is high-speed internet access. The above examples clearly illustrate that there is no simple way to characterize a distance learner, other than the fact that teacher and student are physically apart. Thanks to the Internet, this separation can be thousands of miles or just a few blocks.

Antonio Aranda Eggermont translates video of an Extension School class into an internet-based lecture file.

Based upon the high demand for CSCI E-131b last fall, the Extension School decided to rebroadcast Evenchik's lectures this spring without holding any live classroom lectures. "I was really astonished when my spring enrollment reached 41 students," commented Evenchik. "When I took a look at the mailing addresses for my current students, however, I found that the majority are actually located within the Greater Boston area. Several are living in other states, but clearly the bulk of my students are within commuting distance of Harvard Yard. Many e-mailed me that the convenience factor is of paramount importance."

"I'm delighted we are able to offer CSCI E-131b a second time," noted Dr. Henry Leitner, Senior Lecturer on Computer Science and Director of Information Technology for the Division of Continuing Education. "This is one of those high-tech courses that has a very limited 'shelf life,' but one that is also central to our new Master of Liberal Arts in Information Technology. By this time next year, Evenchik will probably need to modify more than 25 percent of the lectures he did last semester, so it was critical for us to rerun his fall class in as timely a fashion as possible. I was confident of success because Evenchik's students rated his class very highly. In fact, the majority of his students who actually attended his live in-class lectures last fall were also watching the Internet version from time to time."

Evenchik's course is not the only one being offered in distance format this semester. CSCI E-13 Web Programming in Perl, CSCI E-132 Advanced Topics in Data Networking Protocols and Network Architectures, and CSCI E-215 UNIX Systems Programming are both live and online. All three courses have experienced significant jumps in enrollment compared to last year, a combined increase of 86 percent.

James Peregrino, instructor of CSCI E-13, commented that the Internet has proven to be a welcome convenience for him as well as his students. "I am able to run an interactive section meeting from my home on Tuesdays while bouncing my baby on my lap!"

The Extension School's ability to offer multiple courses in distance format has profited by the recent addition of Antonio Aranda Eggermont, Technical and Operational Support Specialist for Distance Education. Directly responsible for creating the internet-based lecture files, Eggermont programs and maintains a large array of sophisticated video servers and other computer hardware and software systems. The Extension School also is grateful for the assistance of Jose Lorbes, Manager of Technical Services at the Science Center, where the live class sessions meet.

"It's exciting that our distance education initiative makes it possible for students all over the world to virtually attend classes at the Science Center," observed Dr. Leitner. "But it's also interesting that the idea of distance learning is not new. At a recent talk given by Susan Rogers, Chief Technology Officer for the Harvard Business School, it was mentioned that distance education dates back to the 1850s, when correspondence courses were invented. Now, however, the Internet and other technologies have made it possible for millions of students to complete various courses that are offered at a distance by a large number of accredited colleges and universities. Perhaps the best known example right now is the Open University of England, which uses a variety of technologies to deliver courses to more than 200,000 students."

And then there's the story of two of Evenchik's fall semester students: one living in New York and the other in Washington, both of whom traveled to Harvard in order to attend the midterm exam. The pair didn't do this out of necessity (the exam was being proctored at remote sites that were convenient to the distance learners), but because they simply wanted to meet the instructor in person and have the pleasure of sitting in the Science Center lecture hall where class meetings were held.

"I enjoyed meeting the two distance learners who showed up at the midterm," commented Evenchik, "but my favorite anecdote concerns the husband of one of my fall semester students. The husband and wife were both living abroad. I had a lengthy back-and-forth e-mail conversation with this gentleman in which I had to convince him that the classes his wife had registered for really were taking place at Harvard, and that this wasn't some kind of scam in which some unscrupulous characters were pretending to be the Harvard University Extension School. The incident reminded me of the New Yorker cartoon where two dogs are discussing the Internet. Its caption reads, 'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!'"