Accomplishments to date

Many educators are aware of ODU's pioneering TELETECHNET program. ODU was among the first universities in the nation to use analog technologies to deliver televised classes to sites and centers. Using that pioneering technology, thousands of Virginia's brightest students have earned their baccalaureate degrees.

The TELETECHNET program has changed with the times, and now operates at sites not only within Virginia but across the nation - using two-way IP-based connections via satellite to link faculty and students in an engaging synchronous connection of learning. And ODU uses other interactive Internet-based technologies (such as two-way video to the office and the home) in a wide variety ofprograms. Online courses in both synchronous and asynchronous formats, and distributed media such as CD-ROM and DVD, are used in conjunction with advanced on-line environments to create a comprehensive approach to learning.

Today, ODU's on-campus students work within many of the same environments as the university's distance education students, since a majority of face-to-face professors use web spaces for discussion, dialogue, the exchange of materials and ideas, test taking and grading, and a variety of other purposes. Today's ODU distance education students sit "virtually" in the same exact classroom as their on-campus peers, connected via innovative electronic means from wherever they happens to be. On-campus students see and hear remote class members' questions during class lectures, and those remote students participate in discussion and debate with their on-campus peers. The line between the on-campus student and the distance learning studentis blurring; in fact, we at ODU are working to eliminate those lines altogether.