Distant students learn from video

Press, 18 November 1989, Page 16

Distant students learn from video

By MARITA VANDENBERG

The Christchurch College of Education has come up with a novel way of having students from as far away as Whangarei and Invercargill sitting in on weekly classes.

Each week for the last year the college’s home economic lectures have been videoed and dispatched to 27 “distance” students. The students watch the video, listen to the questions their 19 local classmates ask, then do their assignments. A week later the video and assignments are on their way back to Christchurch and the next week’s lesson is being sent out. The new distance

teaching scheme has been a great success, say its organisers.

“The response we get back from our students is amazing. Home economics students seem to go that nth degree further,” said Mrs Vai Congdon, the head of the home economics department. The students were generally teachers taking retraining or seeking a higher qualification, she said.

The head of the college television unit, Mr Steve Gerrand, said the idea was a natural extension of video usage. . “Massey University is already turning to a more expensive extension via its televised extramural classes. We’re doing this on a smaller scale at a fraction of the cost.”