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application of telecommunications technologies to the goals and purposes of higher
education in the Greater New Orleans area. (Delgado Community College, Dillard
University, Loyola University, Nunez Community College, Southern University at
New Orleans, Tulane University, University of New Orleans, Xavier University,
and the WLAE-Channel32 Educational Communications Foundation.) NOETC
programs offer college-credit telecourses and varietal higher education
programming produced by it member institutions and special programming
delivered to New Orleans via satellite. The efforts of NOETC have made ground
breaking success in helping the University of New Orleans a forerunner in distance
learning.
If we look at the University of New Orleans study we must still address many
of the issues that are often overlooked. As one instructor put it,I was having a bad
technology day, the power went out an lost connection with a guest speaker.
However, pressing issues currently being addressed are registration and transfer,
student fees and cost, campus coordination and technical staff, faculty interest and
cooperation, work and teaching load, course equivalency issues, faculty training,
faculty support services, faculty reward systems, property rights/ownership,
copyright issues and the proctoring of student exams at remote sites (Drichta 1997).
Support provided by higher education agencies and private sectors can tackle these
issues
Through the efforts of the La. State Board of Regents, LaSERnet II (LaNET-a
statewide higher education network growing out of LOUIS, the Louisiana On-Line
University System) the Office of Telecommunications managementhave
positioned Louisiana to mover forward aggressively. The Board of Regents with
assistance from OTM proposes placing a distance learning classroom on each of its
campuses. This will be mirrored from the existing LaNet that connects LSUBR,
UNO, LSU-A, LSU-E, and LSU-S. The This current project currently in
developmentLaSERnet IIis estimated to cost 11.7M.
As the new push towards technology in education becomes more mainstream
a number of new issues will arise, especially in curriculum development and course
development, instructor/teacher practices and student acceptance.
We touched on only some of the issues that need to be addressed as this new
learning style or mode carries over into the 21st Century. Its also important to
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