By Tess Bresley
Alumni News staff
Invisible classmates. A microphone at every desk. A teacher and a technician. Five television sets suspended around the room.
Some of Nebraska’s newest pioneers use these resources at UNL to give people in remote areas the opportunity to earn a master’s degree in journalism.
“As far as we know, we’re the first master’s in journalism doing this,” Micheal Stricklin, director of graduate studies in the college, says.
The program is based on a form of distance learning. Using one-way video and two-way audio, the college of Journalism and Mass Communications began delivering two classes, Mass Communication Theory and Society, Information and the media, during the fall semester. The classes are broadcast from UNL to site in Chadron, Grand Island, Norfolk, North Platte, Scottsbluff, Omaha, and Sioux City, Iowa.
“There’s a real interest in the state for furthering people’s education,” Stricklin says. “One thing that impresses me about Nebraskans is this incredibly pure belief in the importance of an education.”
However, desire is useless without the proper resources.
“Nebraska is such a big state geographically and such a small state in population that there aren’t many opportunities for people to do graduate work,” Charlyne Berens, assistant to the dean, says.
Professional careers may also inhibit continuing education.
“Professional don’t have the summer off to come to Lincoln and take classes for five weeks,” Berens says. “There is no way a small reporter for a semester or a summer.”
Lucinda Schuft, an off-campus student, drives 90 miles each week from Custer, S.D., to Chadron to take Mass Communications Theory.
“I have been really frustrated,” she says. I’ve always felt I would like to continue my education.”
But as her husband’s profession took them into more remote areas, she saw her chances of that fade with the distance of the city lights.
Nebraska’s first pioneers came to escape the big cities; their modern descendants use the available computer technology to bring the university’s resources into the rural areas. Students in the distance learning program use electronic mail, fax machines and the telephone to complete tests and assignments or to find assistance.
Learning the technology may be a challenge for students like Schuft.
‘We were so remote, we were having trouble with the hook-ups,” she says. I’ve never used any of the technology before. Getting up and going was very frustrating for me.”
Despite computer glitches, Schuft says the class is “informative, applicable and very on top of what’s been happening in the industry.”
Having to watch the professor on television may be an advantage.
“It bothers them in Lincoln than it bothers us,” Schuft says.
“We can see everybody, and the can’t see us. You tend to have interaction wit the people on you site over and above your interaction with the professor. We tend to share our thoughts with everybody.”
The communications among the students is one unique advantage of distance learning.
“People in the class have a really wide variety of backgrounds,” Stricklin says. “The result is a professor’s dream. You want a variety of minds in that room. I’m trying to encourage as much conversation as possible using e-mail.”
Nancy Aden at the Division of Continuing Studies says, “ When you bring adults who are already established, you have a wonderful exchange of experience and ideas.”
Aden directs the administrative end of the program, helping provide student orientations, train teachers and coordinate technology.
Being assertive is crucial for both the students and professors involved in a distance learning class.
“We really encourage them (the students) to overcome some of that reluctance to interrupt,” Aden says. Teachers, she says, must “work harder at including the off-campus students.”
That can be accomplished by calling on the students during class, making an effort to learn their names and including them in the lesson plan, things easier said than done.
“I felt like I was jumping off the Empire state Building and realizing about halfway down that I should have taken flying lessons,” John Bender says. He is associate professor of news-editorial and teaches the Society, Information and the Media class.
Bender and Stricklin encourage participation in their classes by having students lead discussion on assigned readings.
“There has been more participation by the students off campus than on campus which is exactly the opposite of what I thought would happen,” Bender says.
Stricklin says, “It’s a conversation. At least that’s how I try to run it.”
Stricklin has found that if an off-campus student leads the discussion there is more participation by the off-campus students in general. If an on-campus student lead the discussion, the opposite is true.
One twist the professors face is the absence of eye-contact with the remote students.
“I find it easier to focus on the student’s in the room,” Stricklin says. “When it’s someone in Scottsbluff, I don’t know what to do with my eyes.”
The lack of eye contact also makes it hard to tell whether the students off-campus are understanding the lectures, Stricklin says.
To form a more personal relationship with the off-campus students, Stricklin and Bender plan to travel to all the remote sites at least once during the semester. They began with the eastern sites in October.
“That was great,” Bender says. “It was wonderful. It was really nice to meet those people face-to-face.”
Stricklin says, “Before I’m going to let anyone teach a distance learning class, I’m going to require them to get in a car and go see these people. The professors have to be aggressive.”
Such is the mark of today’s pioneer.