Patone, technical coordinator for the school's LEEP3 Distance Education Program, doesn't resemble a drill instructor. As they interact in a Web-based chat room with graduates and continuing students, their worries come through loud and clear. So do learning from a distance and working on group projects with fellow students, who are also at a distance from campus. Bloom, coordinator of integrated library systems for the Harvard Business School, also joined in the live chat demonstration.
Students complete their coursework at home or office, using advanced Web-based technologies.
Students enrolled in the program come from as far away as Alaska, Oregon, California and Massachusetts. This year, the program went international. Out of the 50 students enrolled for the first time this summer, three are Americans living abroad in Japan, Thailand and Colombia. The demand comes from academic libraries, public libraries and other organizations that need to retrieve and organize information. After implementing other avenues of making master's programs more available to students around the state, such as a Fridays-only program, the school undertook the LEEP3 experiment in 1995, offering courses to its first group of students in the summer of 1996.