Math Class Will Attend Lectures at Home

Ever wanted to listen to your lectures without getting out of bed? If you were one of about 20 Extension School students who will participate in a new teaching system this spring, you could.

A new system of "teleteaching" tested at Harvard last semester allows instructors to communicate via personal computers and telephones with students in other buildings, and even in other states. This year students in Math E-1A, "Introduction to the Calculus," will be among the first to attend lectures electronically.

The teleteaching system, one of the first of its kind, allows students to communicate with their classmates as well as the course instructor.

The University Tech-Tel Corporation, a private electronics company based in Washington D.C., pioneered the method in the spring of 1985 said Sumner Myers, president of Tech-Tel. He said the $560,000 Harvard project will be funded entirely by two grants from the Annenberg Project at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Tech-Tel received an initial grant of $25,000 in 1985 as winner of the foundation's thrice-annual competition for grants. The Annenberg Project awarded the remainder of the funding after the pilot project proved successful, said Myers.

"The idea is to be able to teach at a distance and to be able to engage in Socratic teaching, the kind of interaction that takes place in classrooms," said Assistant Professor of Mathematics Daniel L. Goroff, one of the Harvard coordinators of the project.

The teleteaching system was tested last year in a Extension School mathematics course. "I was actually very impressed with how much [students in the test course] learned and how easy it was to teach this way," said Deborah Hughes Hallett, one of the instructors.

So far, California businessmen and house-bound pregnant Boston women have signed up, said David E. Ellen '86-'87, who will teach the course in the spring.

Ellen said he expects more than the optimal number of 20 students to enroll in the calculus course. "The real limiting factor [in enrollment] is not the technology, it's the number of students you can maintain and still have the interactive process," Ellen said.

"We may have to be selective about who takes the course," he said, but added that the selection would be done based on enthusiasm for the program and not through an application process.

In the future, teleteaching may help people in rural areas to receive an education, Goroff said.