Over the last 30 years, there has been a giant leap in methods of educating beyond the traditional classroom extending from recorded lectures on VCR tapes to synchronous learning modalities. This article will review the history of distance education, the strengths and limitations of online learning, as well as discuss the integration of Blackboard…

Examines the Schooldisc program developed jointly by the American Broadcasting Company and the National Education Association and compares Schooldiscs with "ThinkAbout," an instructional television series produced by the Agency for Instructional Television. (IRT)

The study examined the effectiveness of three two-way interactive television courses offered by the University of Utah in providing special education teacher instruction. The courses utilized technology which allowed course instructors as well as distance learners to hear and see each other during instruction. The three courses were offered…

A summative evaluation of the effectiveness of the educational television series, "Statistics," that aired on South African television is presented. The two episodes chosen from the six-episode series covered pie charts, pictograms, and pictographs (episode 1); and point-of-view interpretations of statistics (episode 4). The evaluation…

The Anik-B project is part of the two-year communications experiments for which the Anik-B satellite is being used. The project was designed to explore the possibilities of using Interactive Instructional Television (IITV) to provide distance postsecondary education for people living in widely scattered and sometimes inaccessible areas of British…

In November 1984, the Rand Corporation was asked by the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting (A/CPB) Project to conduct a study during the spring 1985 school semester on the feasibility of evaluating student outcomes from A/CPB telecourses. This report documents the findings of that study, which had three goals: (1) to examine alternative…

This description of a project offering live television transmissions as an addition to the University of Regina's (Saskatchewan, Canada) distance education system includes: (1) an introduction; (2) a description of and rationale for the evaluation model used; (3) a description of the data collection process; (4) a summary of the findings; and (5)…

In early 1985, one of the new television channels resulting from the expansion of the Fort Smith TV Cable Company was allocated to Westark Community College (WCC). In July, a task force was appointed to develop recommendations regarding programming, policies, staffing, equipment, physical location, and organizational location. This report presents…

This paper summarizes formative evaluation activities during the development of a pilot program by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications for a telecourse on introductory data analysis. These activities included: (1) two major design activities--selection of a statistician host teacher and script development; (2) production phase…

The Higher Education Cable Council (HECC) and Warner Cable Corporation offer courses on QUBE, the two-way cable television system, but the HECC colleges rely on videotapes rather than QUBE's interactive capacity. High costs, low registration, and other problems faced by the council are discussed. (JMD)

This examination of the educational and economic advantages of using videocassettes instead of broadcast television for Open University distance education begins by noting that, while the potential importance of television in distance education is widely recognized by educators, students appear to be less appreciative. The Video Cassettes Loan…

The telecourse education program created by Barry University in Florida was evaluated by use of a questionnaire designed to measure students' overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the telecourse process. The questionnaire contains questions about how students heard about the telecourses, whether services were accommodating, what they liked…

Describes the University of Saskatchewan's adoption of satellite television to deliver university courses. The institution's motivation, the teaching/learning model that evolved, findings from an evaluation of the courses, and the dynamics of staff and faculty collaboration needed for the development and delivery of the telecourses are covered.…

A summative evaluation of the two TVOntario series, Dealing with Drugs and Chemical Solutions was carried out in the April-to-June 1991 period. Classes (N=23) were recruited for the intermediate and senior grade level study, which included more than 550 students. The intermediate series, Dealing with Drugs, designed for grade 7 and 8 students,…

This study assessed the second year of a 5-year project--the Carroll Instructional Television Consortium--which uses two-way interactive cable television (both audio and video) as an alternative method of delivering courses in four small rural high schools in Illinois. Specific evaluation questions investigated the instructional effectiveness of…