Wednesday, November 10, 1999

2 Physics Courses Enroll Students on Both Sides of the Pacific By SARAH CARR Professors and students at the University of California at Los Angeles and Kyoto University, in Japan, are working their way through the challenges of "I really feel as though I am coming to get to know the other students and professors, even though they are so far away," says a student in a course taught jointly in California and Japan. distance education in synchronous, trans-Pacific settings: This semester two on-line physics courses enroll students from both campuses, and they are being taught jointly by professors from the two institutions. Cultural, technological, and pedagogical adjustments are all being made as the universities test-drive the two courses and work out the problems they encounter. Students in each classroom can see and hear one another -- and their professors -- in real time. The two offerings are a space-physics course and a conceptual-physics course, intended for non-science majors, that is casually known at U.C.L.A. as "physics for poets." Each course is co-taught by an American professor and a Japanese professor who take turns lecturing. To make the project possible, university technicians installed high-speed communication links between the classrooms, using audio and video equipment and several computers. Students do their assignments and take quizzes entirely on the Internet. They also work on group projects on line. Christina Flatley, a student in the space-physics course, says that the technology has not been a barrier to effective communication so far. "I really feel as though I am coming to get to know the other students and professors, even though they are so far away," she says. U.C.L.A. administrators and professors say that increasing the amount of interchange among students of different cultures was one of several reasons for starting the courses. They also wanted to test the technology needed to offer a synchronous course in two different places. Eventually they plan to offer courses with universities in countries like Britain, France, Russia, and Singapore, as well as more local efforts. International collaborations in distance education have been growing in number in recent years. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, works with two universities in Singapore to offer graduate programs in engineering to students in both Singapore and the United States. In addition, M.I.T. announced on Monday that it is forming a partnership with the University of Cambridge to collaborate on technology research and promote entrepreneurship. (See a story from The Chronicle, November 9.) Such efforts come at a premium, however. U.C.L.A. has spent approximately $250,000 to wire the classrooms and buy the equipment for the physics classes. The courses are also an intellectual challenge for the professors and students. "It is much harder to teach to two different audiences at the same time," says Maha Ashour-Abdalla, a U.C.L.A. physics professor teaching one of the classes. Ms. Ashour-Abdalla says that the American and Japanese students behave differently. On the first day of class, for instance, the Japanese students were particularly quiet, whereas the American students were unusually excited and asked a lot of questions. Ms. Ashour-Abdalla says the American students have slowly adapted to the limited amount of discussion in the course. Meanwhile, the Japanese students are adjusting to having weekly homework assignments rather than one big exam at the end of the semester. Chelsea Schieder, a student in one of the classes, says it is sometimes difficult for her classmates to accommodate another learning style. "While we are trained to admire inquisitiveness, and we demonstrate involvement through raising our hands and participating, the Japanese lecturer seems taken aback, or at least distracted, by the forwardness of our U.C.L.A. class," she says. The challenges can be technical as well as cultural. Ms. Schieder says that since the course is "innovative and technology-dependent, it experiences certain glitches." "I am also pretty wary of doing my homework over the Internet," she says. "There is all that work, and then, click, it disappears and leaves me sitting with my fingers crossed." But she adds that her fears are usually groundless, and says the course is helping her learn how to use on-line resources. Robert D. Cousins, the U.C.L.A. professor who is teaching the conceptual-physics course, says that he and his counterpart at Kyoto have been mired in technical details and haven't had much time to rethink teaching styles. "So far, we have pretty much taken a traditional course and made small adaptations so that it works in front of a camera, but one would really like to rethink the whole way of teaching the course." However, Ms. Ashour-Abdalla says she has found that her teaching has changed as a result of the technology: She uses more hands-on tools, like videos and computer simulations. "When I think of distance learning, I think of leaving the student alone," she says. "But in this class the student is never alone, because of the constant interaction inside and outside of the classroom." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article