It's another way of making a good connection. We encourage HRIM faculty to use presentation graphics and to change the focus every few minutes to make for interesting education. Whether it's graphics or delivery method, many faculty find that techniques they use in video classes improve their live classes, and vice versa. Charles Ih, electrical engineering, agreed. My class notes are filled with complex equations and illustrations of complicated principles.
Many students find it more personal to have the course right there in their living room.
Fox's class, a survey of world religions, is a combination of lecture and discussion when taught live. If I have 100 students in my class, usually 10-25 of them contribute directly to the discussion on a given day. But, the other students benefit from the discussion. Fox has found that students who view the class on videotape, then, have an experience very similar to students in his classroom. Fox said he has a lot of contact, via telephone and e-mail, with his distance education students.