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Overview

Comments on Using the NC-REN

Overview
The State of North Carolina runs a two-way voice and video network called NC-REN (North Carolina Research and Education Network) which connects the 16 campuses of the state university system, several other North Carolina universities and colleges (e.g., Duke University), research institutions, medical schools, and government laboratories in the Triangle and across the state. Our Department presents some courses, seminars, and special talks on the NC-REN video network, and we receive many courses and events from other North Carolina universities.

To learn more about NC-REN, visit its home page.

Comments on Using the NC-REN
Several of our faculty were asked by a university considering an entry into distance education to send comments about our experiences with NC-REN. The response was that there are both some very good and some bad aspects to the NC-REN. Some of these comments are printed below.

Good:
It does work. Students at the remote site really do get your course, and with good staff support (at both ends!) their experience is quite effective. Two-way video and sound is essential to this effectiveness.

In some cases it is desirable to have a faculty member involved at the remote end to handle local questions. This may be a visiting faculty member or someone who might be interested in learning the material in order to teach it later at the remote institution. We have no reservations about using the network to teach faculty.

It is nice to be able to plop down a book, a technical paper, a prop, etc. under a camera and have everybody see it and what you are pointing to.

It is nice to have the facility for showing videotape or computer screens available by default without lots of special preparations.

It is nice to write your notes during class on paper rather than on a chalkboard. First, you avoid the mess of chalk dust. Second, you have a copy you can take away from class rather than losing it in a cloud of chalk dust.

It is nice to be able to sit down for all or part of the lecture, if you want.

It is nice to know that students can go back and view the videotape if they miss something or if you have to do something quickly due to time pressure (and they do take advantage of this).

It is nice to be able to run a videotape from a previous year, or to prepare a lecture in advance to be played when you are out of town for some reason.

It is nice to be able to submit videotapes to teaching review committees, especially when you know you have some super lectures in the can.

Bad:
The remote class really is still remote. They do not interact as well as the live class, and while it's far far better than nothing, it's not as good as being there.

Having to work on a TV screen-resolution presentation area is a total pain. (Of course I can work on the whole table and zoom in and out, but the students see a TV-resolution screen, and that's the problem.) It works better for some courses than others. Courses where words are most important like Software Engineering migrate to the net easily. Courses, or individual lectures, requiring a lot of math or complex diagrams are quite uncomfortable. One interesting skill I picked up in the heat of battle (during an active discussion in a video course) is the ability to write on a piece of paper while looking at a TV screen that is showing me the overhead view my students see. Because of this skill, I have no trouble keeping my writing large enough and in the camera's field of view. Without this ability, you constantly have to check whether you have written beyond the edge of the screen.

I hated to go to some lectures in my computer graphics class last spring. The remote class consisted of only 3 people, so I felt less sanguine about the price the local class paid for our doing the course on the net, and the pain of teaching intersection methods and parametric curved surfaces (mathematical topics involving matrices and long equations) on TV was almost overwhelming. I think going through printed C++ code via TV worked poorly (was visually obnoxious), too.

In technical courses on the net I tend to lean toward well-prepared, general concept lectures that admit prepared, mostly word notes; I find that highly mathematical lectures, even with prepared notes, are difficult. I'm glad I don't teach operating systems where I'd want to develop large timing diagrams on the fly in class.

Communication of paper from the remote class to me was very slow. I was able to put my assignments on the net, so getting things to them was no problem, but getting their homework back seemed to take ages.

Indifferent:
You can't compare video classes to PBS. Don't dress special, don't even think you can present a polished lecture every time. Don't try, and don't let anybody expect it. Trying to be too polished makes you more remote from the classes, local and remote, and that's just about the worst thing you can do, ever. Take the time to do your administrative stuff (go over homework, make announcements, answer impromptu questions about assignments, comment on news or sports(!), etc) as if you are a human living in these times. Concentrate on your current students, not some potential future videotape viewer.

I am most comfortable when I can move around in front of the room. Insist that your video staff follow you with the camera rather than considering yourself chained to the field of view of a fixed camera.

Don't start class until the video comes up. There is not much more offputting for remote students than the feeling that the local people are getting attention not available to them right before class. Even in nonvideo classes, I prefer to be left alone right before class and then stay for discussion or questions after. We can arrange for video office hours, but my numbers of remote students has usually been small, so I have found Internet e-mail plus phone to be effective.

It is a good idea to present a lecture (or more) from each remote site. I try to combine my visit to the remote sites with other business (once I taught my Chapel Hill classes from Charlotte while on my way to Greenville, SC for my mother's birthday celebration). I advise that you go to the remote site early in the course to assess whether there are problems there that will make life more difficult than necessary for students there or for you during the course. (In particular, check access to workstations, software versions, etc.) Meet the teleclass coordinator and make sure everybody knows the quickest/best way to get stuff to you via Internet and via paper.