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-- the Forum February 1993 --
Distance Learning Through
Alternative Delivery Classes:
Rio Salado Community College
RSCC offers courses in several alternative delivery formats for
students who, because of time, distance, or limited mobility, do not
have access to traditional classes. Alternative delivery courses
bring instruction to students in their home, office, or a community
site. The courses are competency-based and are equivalent to
on-campus classes in content, assignments, and credits earned.
The alternative delivery formats available through RSCC include:
- Television courses: lectures are offered over
broadcast television on Channels 3 and 8. Tapes of the classes are
available to students who miss a broadcast.
- Video Teleconference: courses offered on the Video
Conference Network (VCN)
- Audio Teleconference: live, interactive classes
connecting the instructor with students from many sites via telephone
lines, in some cases in other states and countries. As many as 28
locations can be connected at the same time.
- Audio Teleconference with IMAGE Net: conference
call classes with the addition of video computer graphics sent over
telephone lines to monitors in conference rooms at Rio Area Offices.
This is especially useful for classes such as math and electronics
for which some information may be difficult to convey without
images.
- Computer Conferencing: allows students and
instructors to communicate over Electronic Forum.
- Videocassette: classes include tapes which provide
the lecture and any visual information necessary to convey the
message.
- Audiocassette: courses include supplementary
information on audiotape. As with the videotapes, students can check
out tapes at no additional cost.
- Print based courses: all instruction is provided
through text, study guides, and written communications from the
instructor.
The primary tool in most alternative delivery classes is the study
guide, which is organized into sequenced lessons. Each lesson begins
with an explicit statement of what students should know and be able
to do when they finish the lesson. The lessons provide information,
describe and discuss content in the text, assign readings and
exercises from a text, and provide practice activities and
assessment.
Students have the opportunity to communicate with the instructor via
telephone (instructors keep regular telephone office hours),
electronic mail, or in person. Learning assistance, in the form of
group and individual tutoring, is available to distance students at
Rio Area Offices and at other Rio classroom sites. Computer labs are
also available to students at different Rio sites.
Maricopa Center for
Learning & Instruction (MCLI)
The Internet Connection at MCLI is
Alan Levine
--}
Comments to alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu