 Technology Adds New Meaning to World Class
The next time a USF faculty member has a class to teach in Budapest or the Philippines, he or she may have the choice of either catching a plane or simply strolling to the Lone Mountain campus to meet with students.
That’s because USF has equipped a video conferencing center, or virtual classroom, within Lone Mountain for teaching long-distance courses from its San Francisco home. By means of cameras and video sent through dedicated phone lines, faculty can deliver a lecture to students and interact with them as if they were all in the same room, not half a world away. Three cameras in the Lone Mountain classroom will give the foreign students a full view of the instructor and any students in the room. The cameras can automatically follow the instructor’s every move, while a smaller machine projects documents or images the teacher may use as aids. Microphones used by the instructor and attached at every desk will make the American classroom audible to its foreign audience. Meanwhile, the instructor will see the foreign students on one of five video screens set up in the Lone Mountain classroom. The room is scheduled to open for faculty training by this spring and be in operation by fall 2002.
Funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the state-of-the-art electronic classroom will be used primarily for business management and environmental management courses currently offered by USF in Orange County and at universities around the world. Faculty teaching USF’s other transcontinental classes will also have the option of using the video conferencing center.
“We don’t foresee teaching entire courses by video,” said Stanley Nel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The room will be used as an adjunct tool.”
USF offers courses at universities in Budapest and Hong Kong and will soon extend its programs into Thailand. Negotiations are also underway between USF and three Chinese universities as well as one in the Philippines. Given the room’s worldwide reach, faculty could be teaching classes to students on every continent except Africa. And Nel has plans to add course offerings there, as well.
“Ultimately we want to be on all the continents,” Nel said. “Specialties can be shared within an alliance of universities.”
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