He is the only one who doesn't have a camera trained on him, though, so while he can see what everybody else is doing, neither the lecturer nor the other students can see him, as they can see each other. For the first class of students, the Neighbor Island program is working well and filling a need that was never addressed before, said Marsha Anderson, assistant dean of the College of Business. They were limited geographically, and we can overcome that now. The university's Information Technology Services program provides the two-way TV system and the camera operators. The university also set up a Web site for the MBA program with chat rooms for students and instructors.
Students can also communicate with instructors via e-mail.
After some teething problems, the technology has been working well, and everybody involved has adapted their teaching and learning styles, Anderson said. It's frustrating in some ways, but it's exciting to find out what you can accomplish using the technology. Those kinds of signals you don't even think about turn out to be fairly important. You have to learn some new skills to make sure you're getting your point across. After the initial discomfort, she now can use the camera to enhance her teaching, she said, such as having the camera operator zoom in for close-ups of written instructions or equations.