MSVU distance education goes digital

Broadcasting on digital cable is part of Mount Saint Vincent University’s latest effort to make lectures available in various forms.

Students sit in on live taping (Photo: Marielle Picher).

Students at MSVU can now access a lecture up to five different ways, if they have the necessary technology.

In your living room? Turn on the television, if you have digital cable. Want to learn while riding the bus? No problem, if you have an iPod. Say you'd like to watch a lecture on the plane. If you have a laptop or a mini DVD player, you're all set. For those who like to attend class the old-fashioned way - in a classroom - that's still an option, too. There just might be a studio-quality video camera filming over your shoulder.

For the distance education department at MSVU, the more options available, the better. It wants students to access material in the most convenient way possible.

MSVU started broadcasting lectures live on basic cable in 1980. Much has changed since, though. Students can now stream lectures online, teleconference with professors, and download podcasts and lectures from iTunes.

MSVU's broadcast has recently moved from basic cable channel 33 to Eastlink digital cable channel 333. Eastlink hasn't abandoned the pursuit of knowledge on channel 33 altogether, though. It is now home to CPAC - the Canadian parliamentary channel.

The move to digital cable suits the university and the public, says Peggy Watts, director of Continuing and Distance Education. The channel gives the school a public presence, but it's also a public service to have educational programs on television, she says.

It won't just be students making the switch. "There are people who watch out of interest. We know we have a fairly large casual audience," she says.

Students haven't given the school any negative feedback. In fact, they haven't given the school much feedback of any kind. "Students simply accepted it because that's where they felt [the courses] should be," says Chris Beckett, the program director for televised courses at MSVU. From the students' perspective, he says, it's about time the school switched to digital.

Beckett says they were in no hurry. "We have been cautious, prudent and conservative, to come extent, in choosing technology." The school wants to avoid investing in the Ford Pinto of educational broadcasting. "We have been very successful hanging back a little, technologically, and seeing where the technology really is going, not where it looks like it's going, before we commit ourselves," says Beckett.

The same principle will guide their approach to the Internet. The school does not post course material on YouTube because professors are concerned about intellectual property, says Beckett, but they do put promotional material on the site.

Service providers are concerned about the amount of bandwidth, says Watts. Associated costs are a concern. "It's a very attractive idea and it's incredibly convenient, but there is that downside, too." Many rural areas don't have high speed, while digital cable is fairly accessible.

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