Should Pacey Teach Economics?

I think your presence is partly psychological, student prefer to listen to a live speech. Also, you can adapt what you say to non-verbal clues and verbal questions from the audience. When you have perfected the talk by adapting it to audience clues this way you could record it. I know a technology company executive who did this including recording the most frequently asked questions.

You might want to encode the audio using MPEG Layer III. It won't be as good (read, larger file) as a specialized voice audio codec but more people will likely be able to play it without having to download software.

I've seen demonstrations which ran an "avatar" on client computers driven by audio, i.e. only the audio would be transmitted from the servers to the student computer, then the student computer would generate an animated image of a synthesized head mouthing the words, while the audio played. This isn't all that far out from some of the more advanced video-conferencing systems.

I agree that you should transcode the .rss files into MP3 format. Or at least contact the administrator of your server and have him configure the MIME type for files with the .rss extension so that they can be saved as .rss files and don't appear to the browser as .html files.

Only one question: How do the Students get their Presentation on audio?

First, your layout should not be too difficult for College-level students, but you will have to devote one lecture to explaining Course requirements.

Your projected Problem work is designed on the West Point framework, which requires far greater Classroom participation than can be expected, and without sufficient Problems to give the Students a feel for Staff work.

I actually like the style, but warn there will be problems: you actually think Students should think for themselves; a problem if one expects rational thought. lgl

"I agree that you should transcode the .rss files into MP3 format."

But MP3's are TEN times as large! Maybe in a few years when everybody has broadband, storage is essentially free, and super-powerful web servers are free. For now, the compression is worth it, IMHO.

Arnold, MP3s don't have to be 10x as large. For spoken voice, you need only sample at 8KHz (phone quality) and can probably bump the data rate down to 32kbs or lower. A good MP3 encoder should give you these options.

Interesting you ask about remote learning though. There is a whole market of desktop sharing software (in which I'm on the verge of having a product). Things like GoToMyPC.com, WebEx, glance, etc. Aside from controlling a PC remortely, there have turned out to be a lot of applications in "remote marketing", i.e. playing a PowerPoint presentation through the browser. The market leaders seem to think that you get ubiquity of access by relying on standard, widely deployed software for viewing -- i.e. a modern browser. Yes, I see these things displacing the trade show and some traditional advertising, because there is a certain amount of "demand" that is there and doesn't need to be motivated -- people lining up to be sold on something. In the classroom, however, teachers still need to motivate, make the subject interesting and relevant. Tough to do without a presence.

The key IMO to any distance learning class is to make it mandatory for students to interact with each other via an online forum. In addition, there are many more tools to take advantage of such as powerpoint or other presentation software. Good luck

I don't believe that something like Pacey can replace a Professor. Firstly, a class should never be a "dumping" process. Being in the Gen. Ed. Honors Program at Mason, it has become more and more evident that our "student" role in the classroom is not exclusively to be a sponge.

Yes, a sponge we should be, but a professor is necessary so that one may ask questions, debate what the Professor may dictate, and the professor should serve as a mediator so that one student may interact with another.

However, Pacey can still be used to benefit the student. Pacey can record the Professor's on site lecture and be saved so that later, in the dorm, or at home, the student can refer to (and yes, rewind back to) any of the information that was unclear.

We should never see a classroom as a "dumping" place for knowledge. It should be conducted as a socratic environment - a discussion among peers and professors and especially an avenue for students to explore ideas.

I haven't seen anyone mention Macromedia. Distance learning researchers have quite successfully used this software.