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 One Wild Ride! SideBar- Pioneering 101 Chico's Radical Past SideBar- Where Are They Now? E-Commerce SideBar- E-Education A New Kind of Gym Class SideBar- I Want to Be First! |
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Once upon a time, there were classrooms where students gathered to learn from teachers. If you wanted to be a student, you had to attend class. If you wanted to teach, you had to be in the same room as your students. With the advent of satellite and video conferencing, the teacher could be in one room while students were in different locations. Then came the World Wide Web, and the world shrank. If there was a way to combine teaching and computers, teachers and students could expand their contacts, their flexibility, and their knowledge base. Enter WebCT, a software program that allows teachers who are not computer virtuosos to provide Web-based and Web-enhanced classes. Since its inception at CSU, Chico in 1998, the number of WebCT courses has continually expanded. During the spring 2000 semester, the university offered 152 active WebCT courses in everything from Introduction to Dance to Cell Biology, with more than 8,100 enrollments. To enhance the possibilities of synchronous Web-based instruction, the university piloted the Horizon Live system in the spring 2000 semester. Cris Guenter, Education, is one of four professors working with the new system. Her graduate-level Arts Integration course is a WebCT-based on-line class that includes live video delivered to each student’s computer. Guenter can “push information to their screens.” For example, she took the class on a virtual tour of the Kennedy Center. They watched Guenter, then clicked to the Kennedy Center tour that Guenter sent them. When she sent them a photo of Lassen Peak, they returned to the on-line classroom to discuss the event. The use of computer technology shrinks the world while expanding the vision of educational possibility. To learn more about on-line education, visit these Web sites: http://rce.csuchico.edu and http://online.csuchico.edu.
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