The Daily Progress: August 1, 1995

FROM CYBERSPACE TO DORM SPACE - COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY TO STRIKE UVa STUDENTS WHERE THEY LIVE

By Ian Zack - Daily Progress staff writer

Since the days of quill pens and slide rules, university professors have posted times on their office doors when students could come to chat or get help with a philosophical quandary.
But computers, inevitably, are about to change things.
Beginning in the fall, a handful of professors at the University of Virginia will experiment with the latest technological marvel: electronic "office hours."
Jorg Liebeherr, an assistant professor of computer science, and some of his students have designed a system that will allow a teacher to hold forth from his office in front of a computer terminal with a small video camera sitting on top. From their dormitories, students perched before similarly bedecked terminals will be able to see, hear and "talk" to him and to one another, with the help of the Internet.
"We are teaching students about technology, but the way we are teaching students is still in the last century," said the 33-year-old Liebeherr.
Demonstrating the system last week, Liebeherr and his assistants simulated what an office hour of the future might look like: a teacher pulling up a lesson on the screen and drawing with a mouse on a white "chalkboard."
Among the advantages over the old method, they said, are the ability to involve more people at once, the ease of pulling text and pictures from computer files and perhaps most important for the students, the convenience of staying at home.
"I think students will like being able to do it in their own dorms," said Andy Booker, a 19-year-old electrical engineering major who is helping Liebeherr design the system.
"Being able to do it in your pajamas!" added another of the designers, Arvind Viswanathan, a 22-year-old computer science graduate student.
Liebeherr and a couple of English professors will begin using the system during the fall term, though he emphasized it would not entirely replace in-person visits. "This does not substitute the classroom," he said. "It enhances it."
The initial experiment will be conducted with a few computers stationed in several dormitories. With the video cameras running between $200 and $500 and computers costing several times as much, it may be a while before all students are equipped to take advantage of the system.
But electronic office hours are only the beginning of what Liebeherr plans as part of what he calls this "Grounds-wide Tele-Tutoring System."
He will also begin videotaping some of his lectures this fall, which will be transferred to digitized video. The lectures could then be viewed in full by students at their computers or quickly called up during electronic tutoring sessions to illustrate points.
Students from all over the university would eventually be able to study together in computerized study groups, using the same basic program that runs the electronic office hours, he said.
In fact, Liebeherr envisions what he calls the "virtual classroom," with students from all over the world sitting in front of video equipped computers, a professor lecturing and drawing on the screen and answering questions as if everyone were togehter in the same room.
He sees benefits especially for students who for some reason are unable to leave their homes.
"Someone could take one course at UVa, take one course at the University of California at Berkeley and take an Italian class in Rome," he said.
And how would universities figure out tuitions if students started customizing their course lists in that fashion?
"Let the registrar deal with that," Liebeherr said with a smile.