| STORY
Jaclyn Youhana
PHOTOS Stephen Caynon & Jacob Stewart
Welcome to the Age of Technology. Please leave all
chalkboards and textbooks at the door. Fasten your seatbelt,
and enjoy the ride. Keep your eyes open — the
scenery changes as fast as you blink.
 |
| Professor Richard Berrong teaches
French through the distance learning program. |
Pop into Room 311A of the Business Administration Building
during one of professor Richard Berrong’s French
classes. Notice the image of a classroom projected on
the white overhead screen.
Berrong looks at the empty room on the screen and cocks
his head.
“Ah ha!” he says. “There is Katie.”
“Eh, she has disappeared,” he says, as
the woman walks out of view and another enters.
“That’s not Katie,” he says. “Excuse
me, ma’am. Can you hear me, ma’am? Katie,
are you there?”
The image changes to a different room with a young
woman sitting at a long table.
“Oh, they had another campus! We were looking
at somebody else,” Berrong says, laughing.
Now he’s looking at the right campus, and Katie
Bang, who is enrolled in the French composition class,
is successfully broadcast to the room.
Berrong is the only teacher in the modern and classical
language studies department to teach classes through
distance learning.
All eight Kent State campuses have distance-learning
classrooms. By using microphones and video cameras,
students miles away from the Kent campus can take a
course here. In a distance-learning class, an image
of the regional campus students is projected onto an
overhead screen. All students — both at Kent and
the regional campuses — speak into microphones.
Bang is a senior at Hoover High School in North Canton
taking post-secondary classes at the Stark campus, 30
miles away from Kent. She’s the only one there
enrolled in French composition.
“Stark is not going to hire a faculty member
to teach one student,” Berrong says. “It’s
either this or nothing.”
Bang says she’s glad the university offers her
this option, but it can be trying because both the video
and audio systems have problems.
“It’s really frustrating if I can’t
hear what the students are saying,” she says.
“Sometimes professor Berrong’s microphone
will blank out. It’s like, ‘What did you
say? Will I have to know this for
the test?’”
Teneha Thompson, a student in the French class, says
she wishes she could have taken the course without the
distance learning part of it. Some people aren’t
prepared for such advances.
“It’s still kind of new, so we still have
some problems,” says Thompson, international relations
and French major.
“Considering all that, it still works pretty
well.”
 |
| Every desk in Berrong's class
is equipped with a microphone and computer |
And the university is working to make sure its staff
and students will be ready for the future of education.
Seven years ago, the College of Education had a single
class devoted to technology. Now all education majors
take a variety of classes that incorporate technology,
says Dale Cook, associate dean of the College of Education.
“We realize that teachers have multiple computers
in the classroom and Web access in K-12 schools today,”
he says. “The students, we felt, needed to learn
in an environment that could better approximate what
they’d encounter in a classroom.”
One of the first classes sophomore education major
Andrea Brookhart took was based primarily on technology
— a basic get-to-know-your-computer class, she
says.
“I don’t like computers. I hate them,”
Brookhart says. “But I did learn a lot. I never
in my life thought I could make a Web page.”
A. Raj Chowdhury, dean of the School of Technology,
says students and professors have to accept that technology
is taking over the classroom.
“Did you know green chalkboards are more expensive
than one of these?” he asks, placing a hand on
his computer.
But Michael Tubergen, associate chemistry professor,
is stubborn. He relies heavily upon the chalkboard during
his daily lessons and sees computers as an inconvenience.
“It’s a waste of my time, so I’m
reluctant to take 10 minutes, especially if it doesn’t
add content. It only adds flash,” he says.
Foreign language books are hard to digest, Berrong says.
So everything his students need is on the Web.
“The traditional way of teaching literature —”
He pauses, sits up straighter, pulls down his blazer
and lifts his nose, “— is a thing of the
past.”
Thompson, the Kent campus student in Berrong’s
class, says having her text online is convenient but
also frustrating because she’s not very Internet-savvy.
Former student Kathryn Brimelow, who now lives in South
Africa, says Berrong’s online text was especially
handy when she went to school at Kent State. She took
his fall 2000 French composition class.
When Brimelow graduated in August 2002 with a major
in international relations, she still had a few more
classes to take for a French minor. She used Berrong’s
Web site to refresh her memory so she could get the
minor.
“It’s really helpful to have all the materials
online, especially the self-exercises, and he has everything
well-organized,” Brimelow says.
Almost every discipline has at least one room dedicated
to distance learning — there are nearly 20 rooms
at the Kent campus.
“If I had the money, I’d turn every classroom
into a technology classroom,” Chowdhury says.
 |
| Photo Illustration |
But John Jameson, history department chair and professor,
says other classrooms need funding as well, like those
in Satterfield and Bowman halls. About 90 percent of
students will attend class in one of these buildings
before they leave the university, says John Jameson,
history department chair and professor.
From his experience teaching in Bowman Hall, he knows
it needs better equipment.
“They literally use duct tape to repair that
screen,” he says of the overhead projection screen
in Room 206. “So what you get is reflected duct
tape.”
There’s really no one to blame for certain classrooms
receiving more funding than others.
It essentially comes down to alumni relations, Administration
Vice President David Creamer says, who is in charge
of university finances.
“Some departments have relationships with alumni
and receive support for longer periods of time,”
he says. “The problem arises because it can be
very uneven.”
Building maintenance is funded by portions of the state-allocated
capital budget, and some departments pay for themselves
through student fees.
While Bowman Hall just received renovations to its
lecture halls two years ago, the improvements are often
outdated in two or three years, Creamer says.
And Bowman and Satterfield halls aren’t on the
six-year plan, which details what buildings are next
in line for renovations.
As an administrator, Chowdhury doesn’t have to
teach. But he does to keep up with changing technology.
All the courses he teaches are Web-based, which makes
for an interesting class, he says.
Some students who take his Web-based classes live in
Turkey, India and China or are from the Geauga and Tuscarawas
campuses.
“What an excellent way to bring the world together,”
he says.
Berrong says he never would have thought this kind of
teaching was possible when he first started out.
“Times have changed a lot in 26 years, and, in
terms of technology, for the better,” he says.
“If I continued to teach the same way now that
I began 26 years ago, that wouldn’t say a lot
for me, now would it?” |
