Distance Learning Educates Remote Areas

PLYMOUTH-Imagine having a three to five second delay between what your professor says and the time it takes for you to hear it. This is how distance learning works. Latin Professor Amanda Loud is the first to be experimenting with this tool. Two days a week, Loud goes to Lamson Library, turns on a TV and a camera, and dials in to her classroom in Woodsville, NH, where she is teaching Latin 204. “It has caused me to utilize technology”, says Loud. All of her work for the students is faxed or mailed to the school in Woodsville days prior to her dialing in on the class. And the students take their quizzes and exams via WebCT. She can’t improvise minutes before class, and there is no individual interaction between teacher and student, but “it does allow isolated communities [such as Woodsville] to connect with great resources”. No other language can be taught in this manner. The three to five second delay means that both teacher and student must speak in metered sentences. Latin is a dead language, it is only written; whereas French and Spanish are living languages and you cannot teach a living language speaking only in meter. You are not losing just seconds of class time, you are losing minutes due to the time delay. In fact, virtual classes learn about two thirds of what a real class will learn. Loud is now going into her second semester of teaching the course via distance learning. Her first semester grades were A’s and B’s. This shows great success on her part, the part of her students, ITS, and advancements in learning in the future.