Using fast link lines and technology developed by UCLA's Center for Digital Innovation the course is taking the concept of distance learning to an entirely new level. Professors in Los Angeles and Kyoto appear live before the students on their home campuses and appear on video screens in a classroom across the Pacific. Students at either location can not only ask questions and receive immediate answers from the professors, they can also interact with student at the other campus. By breaking down the distance barrier to education, this pioneering effort opens a new realm of possibilities for university education.
Students listen and watch as professors in Japan introduce themselves.
Several links will carry the course transmissions. This new teaching technology will encourage a highly interactive presentation of university courses. Lectures, assignments, demonstrations, and class interactions will be archived for later on-demand access by students and instructors. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this plan is the possibilities it presents. Though early proponents of wide-spread computer use had definite and often realistic ideas of how computers would be used, we now know that their ideas barely scratched the surface of the actual potential for computer use.