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The Log | School News

Course 'Bridges the Distance' Using New Technology

New technology is bridging the 180 miles between the Nicholas School students on Duke's main campus and those at the Duke University Marine Lab in ways that have not been possible before.

This semester, using new video conferencing technology, Patrick N. Halpin is teaching a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) class simultaneously at the Levine Science Research Center and at the Duke Marine Lab. Halpin conducts class from the LSRC's computer lab, while students at the DUML follow him on a large-screen video monitor. An identical monitor in the computer lab and two-way microphones allow Halpin to see and talk with his "long-distance" students.

"It's not the same as face-to-face interaction, but it's the next best thing," said Halpin.

Based in Durham, Halpin, a geospatial technologies specialist, saw the DUML's new equipment as an opportunity to offer a more advanced course on marine applications for GIS and to meet the demand of students spending their semester in Beaufort.

ENV 298.33, GIS Remote Sensing for Coastal and Marine Applications, serves 20 students, five in Beaufort. Halpin, assistant professor of the practice of landscape ecology, sees the course as a pilot project and hopes that other courses can be created using the distance learning technology.

The video conferencing equipment, provided to the DUML through a gift from J. Thomas McMurray of Marine Ventures Foundation in Washington, D.C., is used almost daily to connect the two campuses for meetings, seminars and presentations.

Halpin uses another new technology, Duke's Blackboard course information system, to make course materials-such as the syllabus, course schedule, assignments, frequently asked questions, quizzes and digital versions of lecture presentations-available to the students over the Web. Students can turn in lab assignments on the Web and come back to check their grades. In another course, he used the technology to do a timed exam that students could take at their leisure.

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