As Stahl and other professors tried to figure out how, given those restraints, students could accrue the 600 contact hours necessary to complete the class work. They realized the answer was distance education. Students can ask questions during class, and, often, professors break the class into small groups, sending students to private areas on the Web site to work together on different prob lems. There, they can talk to one another and develop presentations that they later deliver to the rest of the class. Assignments are posted on a Web site and can be accessed 24 hours a day.
Students spend four weeklong residency periods on campus, one before each quarter.
The in-residence time is important, Stahl says, because the opportunity for students to meet one another and work face to face enhances their learning. While they're on campus, physicians spend at least eight hours a day in class, hours that provide an introduction to the work they will cover in the coming quarter. There also are optional evening sessions that address prob lems associated with distance education, such as the need for better computer skills. Alan Lassiter, M.D., CEO of Cook Children 5 Physician Network in Arlington, Texas, says the UTK program is giving him a working knowledge of business principles and the credentials he needs to fulfill some of the unexpected de mands of his job. Though the children's hospital is in Knoxville, the physician MBA program was not up and running until after Lassiter moved to Texas.