Although about half of the enrollees are graduate students, many have Ph.D. degrees and some are older than Martin Berz, the MSU physicist who organized the course. One benefit of this kind of instruction is anonymity, says Berz. Prominent scientists who would hesitate to participate with comparative youngsters in a physical classroom don't mind doing so in a virtual classroom. If participants on the opposite side of the world don't want to get out of bed to view it, they can pick up the audio portion on the Internet. Lecture notes and other material about the course are regularly posted on the course's Internet home page.
Homework is graded instantly by a computer that rejects wrong answers.
One difficulty was keeping up with the 1,500 e-mail queries that Berz and three assistants answered in just the first three months of the semester He is trying to cut down on the volume without cutting off the students by posting questions and answers on the home page. It's the wave of the future but it is also very demanding and you can't watch class reactions as you lecture. It was offered on the Internet for the first time last summer and fall and is to be offered again this fall. The 17 students who registered in the summer and 24 who signed up in the fall were given the option of also attending three Saturday sessions on the campus. Most of them did.