Making the grade in virtual classrooms

PERRI PELTZ, CNNdotCOM CO-HOST (voice-over): For some students, this is what college is all about. The football games, the camaraderie, hanging out and, hopefully, getting an education.

At Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, sociology professor Donald Smith is discussing the different methods of conducting and evaluating research in Sociology 337: Introduction to Social Research.

Two hundred miles away, in Fairfax City, Virginia, another student is taking that same course -- except Virgina Fedor is at home, logged on and plugged into Professor Smith's virtual classroom. Fedor needs the course for a degree in criminal justice.

For financial and personal reasons, Fedor is unable to take four years off from work to attend college. She works full-time -- 4 p.m. to midnight -- at a security office nearby.

VIRGINIA FEDOR, DISTANCE LEARNING STUDENT: I'm taking care of a mother who has recurring cancer. I want to be available to help my family

If I miss a class, I'm not missing any material. I can log in whenever I want, I can replay the course whenever I want and the instructor is always available online by e-mail or over the phone.

PELTZ (voice-over): Today, more than 14 million people log onto their computers and double-click into a virtual classroom. Available are classes for undergraduates and graduate degrees in fields as diverse as nursing, business, engineering and technology. Experts predict e-learning will become a $2 billion industry within four years. strategy+business magazine has been watching the growth of e-learning. Randall Rothenberg is its editor in chief.

RANDALL ROTHENBERG, EDITOR, STRATEGY & BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Once we have more or less universal access to broadband to real high speed technologies, you will have people sitting home taking Harvard courses, taking Wharton Business School courses. It's undeniable that this opens up a wealth of opportunities to people who just can't get it otherwise.

PELTZ (voice-over): But not everyone believes distance learning is a good thing.

CAROLE FUNGAROLI, PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: For me, teaching isn't just disseminating information. A lot of what I do involves assessing how much you get it or my student gets it, questioning them. We do a lot of dialogue.

PELTZ (voice-over): Dr. Carole Fungaroli is a literature professor at Georgetown University and author of a book called Traditional Degrees. Fungaroli says age and family responsibility shouldn't preclude anyone from seeking a traditional degree.

FUNGAROLI: Single mothers had the biggest challenge. Many of them were having their tuition completely waived at schools that are phenomenally expensive and they were earning money. They took their kids on campus. Kids fit on campus. Professors have been doing it for years.

PELTZ: If I went home and said to my husband, "Honey I'm moving the kids, we're going back to college, I'm quitting my job," he would look at me like I'd lost my mind. My feeling is that this could be an impossibility for some people, so what's wrong with distance learning in those situations?

FUNGAROLI: It's not that bad, but that's one of the reasons why it worries me -- because it's not that good either. It's just second rate. The big problem here is that people see this purely in terms of either-or. That's not what it's about. This is about opening up a whole new set of tools and a whole new set of opportunities in the range between the classroom and the distance learning experience.

PELTZ (voice-over): And online students like Virginia Fedor say they don't miss sitting in the classroom.

FEDOR: Sometimes the teachers go too fast for a student to pick up the information and write notes. And when you're busy taking notes, he's still talking and you really do miss a lot.

PELTZ (voice-over): Not all online schools are connected to bricks-and-mortar universities. Many exist solely in cyberspace, like Concord university -- the first online law school, created in 1998.

ANDREW ROSEN, PROVOST, CONCORD LAW SCHOOL: We don't have buildings; we don't have cafeterias; we don't have football teams and marching bands. What we spend our money on is the actual education that students are getting and in particular, we spend our money on making sure that students have access to faculty.

PELTZ (voice-over): Concord is a four-year school costing $4800 a semester. That's about half as much as traditional law schools.

But the neophyte online law school has already stirred up controversy. It began when Harvard law professor Arthur Miller, a paid consultant, taped a series of video lectures for Concord Law students.

When Harvard discovered that students outside Cambridge, Massachusetts could access these lectures, the administration asked Miller to give up the course.

ARTHUR MILLER, PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: They're worried about the Harvard trademark, and they seem to be saying I'm diluting it by allowing some of my materials to be used at Concord Law School, Concord University. Curiously, they never said that when I was identified for 20 odd years on Good Morning America as Harvard Law School.

PELTZ (on-camera): Harvard policy permits faculty to teach, consult or research as long as it doesn't consume more than 20 percent of their time. Now the university has proposed a new guideline that restricts professors from dealing with an educational institution at any time.

MILLER: I've been quoted several times as saying, "Who owns Arthur Miller?" That the university, by barring me from using the Internet without permission, (is) saying they own me. That's not why I became an academic.

PELTZ (on-camera): While Harvard belabors this issue, education experts say distance learning is here to stay; Old Dominion's professor Donald Smith says he doesn't mind doing double duty in the classroom and on the Net.

DONALD SMITH, PROFESSOR, OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY: We're reaching students who otherwise wouldn't have access to college, so I haven't seen any difference in their performance over the years.

PELTZ (on-camera): And, by all accounts, Virginia Fedor is getting exactly what she wants in her virtual classroom. But she does have one request of her teacher.

FEDOR: I hope someday I get the opportunity to meet the voice at the other end of the computer.

Study: Most students find Web indispensible for research
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Students and teachers experiment with virtual high schools
August 9, 2000
Should laptops join lunchboxes?
July 4, 2000
New trend: Tech is hot college major
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Children of the IT revolution
January 13, 2000
Remote school gets high-speed Net access to bridge divide
May 21, 1999

Old Dominion University
strategy+business
Concord University School of Law
Harvard University

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