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Distance Learning's Growing Reach
by JOHN WALSH, Senior Vice President Compression Labs, Inc. San
Jose, Calif. and BOB REESE, State Training Facilitator Georgia
Statewide Academic and Medical System Georgia College Macon,
Ga.
Education has received a much needed boost in the form of distance
learning and a key catalyst for the growth of distance learning is video
communications. This visual extension of the classroom includes
videoconferencing, where multiple classrooms conduct interactive
sessions; broadcasting, where one site communicates to multiple
classes; and personal conferencing, where individuals can communicate
with one another visually on their computers.
Video communications has become affordable and practical for distance
learning through the use of a technology known as compressed digital
video. This technology makes the transmission of video less costly by
reducing the size of the video needed to be transmitted. Before
compressed digital video, only a handful of educational institutions
operated small analog-based closed-circuit television networks.
Today, the distance learning environment has changed dramatically.
Educators increasingly seek new solutions to a myriad of challenges
including rising costs, reduced operating budgets, over-utilized
resources (from faculty to the physical plant), and growing competition
for a declining student pool. At the same time, advances in both
two-way interactive and one-way broadcast video technology have
made distance learning more versatile and cost-effective than ever, ideal
for a wide range of educational applications. Distance learning has
become a core educational strategy in the 1990s, with a reach that
extends to a broad cross-section of institutions and curriculum
providers around the world.
Full Spectrum of Applications
The picture most often associated with distance learning is that of
college students on an outlying campus gathered to watch a televised
lecture by a professor at a campus several hundred miles away. And
indeed, the broadcast of selected courses taught by distinguished or
popular professors to remote sites is one of the most common distance
learning applications. But it is by no means the only one. Today, digital
video is used for a full spectrum of applications designed to meet the
diverse requirements of students and institutions alike. These include:
Statewide cooperative educational programs involving many
institutions offering curricula for grade levels from kindergarten
