From across the Mt. Hsueh Range, employees of the Ilan County Government listen to live class presentations by a famous National Taiwan University professor; some handicapped people, paralyzed with serious spinal injuries, have learned to design and create web sites on the latest computer network from their homes; Taiwanese high school graduates don't even need to cross the sea to study at an American university and discuss their problems at any time with their teachers. . . . In the past these would have sounded like tall tales, but now, through a new generation of distance education, these scenes are being acted out in many urban and rural areas in Taiwan.

Saturday afternoons are the time that Yu Hungjung, acting mayor of Nanao Township in Ilan County, most anticipates. What's surprising is that what he looks forward so much to doing is not taking a break after a week of work running back and forth between the township government offices and the county council, but rather going to class-the county government has commissioned National Taiwan University (NTU) to set up a curriculum for branch classes for masters' degree credits in Administrative Management, taught long distance. After starting in spring of last year, the class has already entered the second semester. With this rich curriculum, Yu Hungjung is happy when he leaves home in the morning, and is satisfied when he returns.

"The teachers assigned to us by NTU are all first rate. Once you've done public service for a while, you're not aware of how your thinking becomes set in its ways; spending a couple of hours being forced to think through impacts and challenges really produces good results," he said.

Yu Hungjung and some 30 fellow classmates receive remote education every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon in the "Video Classroom" of Ilan Middle School, the images of the NTU professors reaching them from faroff Taipei through the teleconferencing system. There's no lectern in the classroom, only a large, 100 inch screen, which everybody is glued to, listening to the hearty discussion by the teacher. The class lecture notes are shown projected on the screen, and can be selected at any time instead of the image of the teacher lecturing; meanwhile, the explanatory notes, usually written on the blackboard, are shown on another 100 inch screen from an electronic notepad. If the students have questions, after raising their hands they have to remember to face the microphone on the table to speak, so that their teacher can hear them.

At the professor's end, there are no students, just a 50 inch television screen, a multimedia computer network, a camera, a video tape recorder, an audio tape recorder, a dataprompter, a microphone and other such equipment, which comprise the "main broadcasting studio classroom" in something like a teleconferencing system.

How effective is this way of going to class? Unexpectedly, most of the classmates and even the teacher feel that, "There's no difference in the feeling of immediacy from a live classroom." Also, because with the video recorder there's no way for anyone who sleeps in class or skips class to escape detection, the observation of NTU Professor Yu Changsung, who taught last semester's Industrial and Business Management courses, is that, "Rather, such a class situation is even more competitive!"

The new campus favorite

Besides cooperating with Ilan County Government's distance education, NTU is also working with Tsinghua University and Chiao Tung University to carry out an experimental remote teaching project which is intercollegiate and elective.

Besides NTU, Tsinghua University and Chiao Tung University in the northern part of the country, this project will also be developed simultaneously in the south at such institutions as National Chung Cheng University and National Cheng Kung University. And at the end of last year, in order to help promote Minister of Education Wu Ching's idea of "priority on departments, with school selection secondary," it was decided to apply distance education to private universities and vocational colleges.

Professor Chen Wentsun of Tsinghua University, who previously was the first official in the Ministry of Education in charge of promoting distance learning, points out that intercollegiate development of remote classroom teaching compensates for a lack of teaching resources for a liberal education. Because most universities particularly emphasize their own specialties, this generally creates a surplus of human resources concentrated in certain important fields, while good generalists are hard to come by. Now that distance education is being used, teaching resources from each school can complement one another, which is sure to provide positive assistance to university education.

Beyond intercollegiate cooperation, each school might also require long distance teaching due to the extension of learning environments. NTU Medical School's Chinshan remote education project has been instituted because its fifthyear students have a course called "Family and Community Medicine" in which they undertake to get a firsthand acquaintance with the actual problems of primarylevel medical care, so that in the future they might become the core of community health for the citizens. The students have to go to live near the Chinshan Community Medicine Training Center for around two weeks. For three or four years, this course gave many teachers trouble, because in order to conduct a twohour class they had to travel for three or four hours over the highway through Yangmingshan. But since the end of the year before last, when remote teaching began to be used, it not only eased the teachers' burdens but also solved the school's problem of a shortage of teaching staff.

Although Ilan's master's degree program, the intercollegiate elective courses from five universities, and the Chinshan distance learning project each utilize video systems which allow the students and teachers to see and hear each other live, there are differences in the degree of clarity and fidelity in the picture and sound as well as the speed of transmission for each.

The NTU Medical School Chinshan project uses three ISDN lines which form the basic data transmission network of the visual information system. Usually the transmission capacity of one ISDN line is around two to four times that of a telephone line; its visual data capacity is a bit lower than that of the Ilan model.

Ilan's long distance education utilizes T1 lines for its transmission. Professor Yu Changsung, who was in charge of planning this system, points out that a T1 line is the equivalent of twelve ISDN lines, so its visual data capacity should be quite adequate for use in long distance learning.

The ATMtechnology optical fiber network used between the various universities can rapidly transmit a large amount of visual data, with even finer picture quality. It is the most advanced transmission network available to date. In Taiwan, it remains in the experimental stage, and it is not even widely used overseas.

A classroom without national boundaries

Offcampus, fastthinking entrepreneurs have long since recognized commercial opportunities in distance education. There is one entrepreneur in the education business who last year imported the curriculum of Coastline State Community College, from California, USA, and through a teleconferencing setup introduced international distance learning classrooms. In September of last year this school officially began classes, and attracted more than a dozen students who had not tested into a local college or who wanted to obtain an American degree. The usual format for classes is to have foreign teaching assistants, hired here in Taiwan, explain the original American textual materials in a lecture. Every week arrangements are made for a teacher to present a lecture from the master class studio in the United States. Due to the disparity in time zones, these transpacific online classes are always held very early, at 7:00 in the morning. After class, the students can use email or fax to discuss questions with the teacher.

Several of the students who have participated in the curriculum say that at first they were very unaccustomed to using the online class format, but after a short while they got used to it. The problems really are with the level of the English, which they are not readily able to cope with or respond to during the time they are in class, so they find it difficult to pose questions to the American teacher on the screen. The students say, "We still favor the direct guidance the assistant teachers provide in their classes."

Another problem with this type of transnational distance learning model is the lack domestically of a legal basis for its regulation. Therefore, the Ministry of Education does not recognize such academic credits or conferred degrees. Furthermore, Cheng Kuoshun, the head of the Advisory Office of the Ministry of Education, points out that long distance education in Taiwan is only in the experimental stage. The "Distance Education Pilot System" project promoted by the Ministry of Education two years ago, which has already seen research and development on hardware and teaching methods by information sciencerelated departments in various universities, will need to undergo a complete process of evaluation before its effectiveness can be known. Moreover, the quality of universities overseas varies, and their curricula may not have undergone any review at all. For these reasons, "It is not appropriate to approve it yet."

Many observers who are wellacquainted with the tendency broadcasting technologies have of not waiting for people to catch up with them, hope that the Ministry of Education will move along with more rapid steps with the revision of the law. Professor Chiu Kueifa of the information education department of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) says that even if the Ministry of Education does not want to support a model of remote education in which students might soon be isolated individually without a school or activities, still, there are a considerable number of courses, such as specialized classes at the masters' level, or junior high and high school English teaching, where they might consider adopting remote learning models and utilize online connections with other countries. In this case, the Ministry of Education would do better to produce a supervisory legal framework at an early date.

Long distance education for everybody

Other than visual information systems where the teachers and students can come "face to face" and directly interact with one another, other distance learning setups can be arranged which do not require prohibitively expensive teleconferencing equipment, and studio classrooms devoted to the task, but rather take the personal computer as the basic accessory, and build a system using the network environment. In this way, remote learning can enter into businesses and into the home. Obviously its potential for development is much greater this way.

Reportedly, in the United States where Internet use is already extremely prevalent, beginning two or three years ago the curricula for many universities had already been made accessible on the net. Professor Chan Tak-wai, of the information science department at National Central University, declares that American students are completely used to reading lecture notes and looking for materials on the net; as well, via the net, they regularly ask their teachers questions, conduct discussions after class, and turn in their homework. The network already plays a very important role in afterclass review and guidance.

And because there is such a rich profusion of class materials on the web, intercollegiate electives can be provided by methods using the Internet. "Whereas the cost of tele-conferencing equipment is astronomical, use of American network materials is just about free of charge, so besides having individual teachers to show the way and classes by prominent professors, which require the teleconferencing systems often used in business and industry, most learning still places more emphasis on using the network," says Chan Takwai.

In Taiwan the Internet craze has already lasted for a year or two, but other than some intermittent use in certain institutes, based on research needs or due to the initiatives of certain teachers who have special interest in education through computer networks (see table), this kind of interest isn't anything as prevalent as in the United States. For this reason, materials concerning education and learning in Taiwan are quite scarce on the net.

However, in the past few months on the Internet and web many sites have appeared with all sorts of educational purposes, such as those belonging to various campuses, a study site linking more than ten supplementary schools on Nanyang Street, a children's education web site designed for elementary students, and so forth. So it is clear that the popularity of network education is beginning to spread.

Although presently network education still doesn't have the instantaneous interactive capabilities of teleconferencing systems, it still has the advantage of economic practicality as its rationale. As well, you don't need to leave your house; the feature of staying home to study is one that cannot be matched by teleconferencing setups. This is especially appreciated by those who are unable to leave their homes and go out for education.

Last year's program, "Home vocational training for those with serious spinal injuries," cosponsored by the information sciences education department of NTNU and the Council of Labor Affairs, is a concrete example of using the network to develop fully the potential of remote education.

Another kind of miracle

Wang Chiensheng, who is 40 years old, has spent close to half of his life in his bed and wheelchair. More than ten years ago, a car accident left him paralyzed from the neck down; he can only move his right hand a little, with great difficulty. Remote learning has kindled new hope in his life in spite of his physical condition.

At the beginning of last year, he learned from a friend that the information sciences education department of NTNU was choosing five individuals with serious spinal injuries to do an experiment in home computer learning. Without any background in computers at all, he still took a chance and took the test. He never expected to be selected.

Before training officially started, he had only one meeting with the teachers and the other four classmates. He learned the basic computer procedures and reached an understanding of the overall method of learning in the course. After this, step by step, he followed all the stages of the curriculum designed by the teachers. According to the design, during this period, whatever problems he encountered, he could only use the telephone or the computer network to communicate about them.

Wang Chiensheng was online about eight or nine hours every day during the training period of the classes. The course required that he keep a journal for every day; he was to fill in details including the time spent reading the class materials, the time spent using the computer, the problems he could not understand, or what things he learned, etc. At the end of each week, he would also write weekly notes.

"Every week the teacher can keep track of how long the student studies, and can post the results on the net. I can find out how the other students are doing and this helps me to keep up my efforts," Wang Chiensheng states. There is also "Weekly News" on the network; this is the place where the teachers and students regularly meet to have a "gettogether." Besides the teachers' weekly homework assignments, the reinforcement of the important points for each week's studies, as well as answering questions and clearing up difficulties, the students also can all share accounts of their learning achievements.

"One doesn't change overnight, but change really does happen. All the hopes bound up with the selection process at the very first, and all the many difficulties so far in the process of learning, have brought a lot of competitive struggle, and a lot richness and interest into my life." Even though they rarely meet their fellow students, they often chat with and encourage each other; the five of them have become friends that share everything with each other.

Even though his physical condition was the worst of the group, and therefore his learning speed was slowest, in three months of intensive training, Wang Chiensheng learned the programming language for the hypertext code which is used on the World Wide Web, as well as all sorts of functions of the Internet; he even learned advanced graphics software. His finals project was a site coauthored with the other four classmates through the network, entitled, "Navigator for the Disabled." At the ceremony marking completion of training, people from all walks of life, seeing the abundant material on this net site, all praised the students' skills; the results even greatly surprised the Council of Labor Affairs, which at first had not had much hope for this project, and had had a very tentative attitude towards it when it was getting underway.

From what Wang Chiensheng tells us, there are lots of people who have studied computer networks in the existing supplementary schools, who still often come and ask them questions! And their confidence has increased even more-the Yam Web Navigator gave their work a good review and they were recently commissioned to create two archives for the Academia Sinica: "Taiwan Historical Materials Research" and "A Hundred Years of Tea Leaves History."

Besides complementing mainstream education, sharing resources, supplementing inadequacies created by distances and distribution between the city and the countryside, and effecting a revolution in the education of handicapped people, many experts and scholars have expressed that even more important areas of development of distance education ought to be professional education and social education.

Home and classroom

From the example of the United States, where distance education developed the earliest, no matter if it is the teleconferencing system or the network system, once oncampus learning has developed to a certain level, it spreads to the business world, and even into the average home.

Stanford University is cooperating with more than 200 hightech companies in California's Silicon Valley, in order to provide technical upgrade courses to more than 10,000 workers through a microwave visual broadcasting system. Other than students taking elective credit courses and those in the masters' degree program, more than half of the participants were "auditors" not receiving college credit.

On the network, the interest in learning is very intense. Other than a very common movement to promote education by the universities, it has spread to other offcampus institutions such as supplementary schools and public interest groups, which vie with each other to provide educational curricula, and even issue certificates of learning.

How is this all developing in Taiwan? As stated by Lin Ipeng, a Professor at NTU's information science engineering department, and who, as a consultant in the Ministry of Education's Advisory Office, is also in charge of promoting distance education domestically, putting onto the network the entire curricula of all the departments of each university is a very feasible model for adult education. He plans to urge the Ministry of Education to facilitate putting 100300 courses onto the network within the next year or two, as quickly as possible. The contents of what will go onto the net will mainly include class lectures, review topics, bulletin boards for discussion by teachers and students, and text and graphics displays, for the present time. When Netscape version 4.0 appears in July of this year, the realtime video screen showing the teacher in the class can be viewed.

If, within five years, we can really do what Lin Ipeng has planned and have 500 courses on the web, then "Won't all Taiwan become a university?"At that time, all you would have to do is get onto the net, then enter the World Wide Web, and you could take courses from any university, all in your own home.

Chan Takwai points out that the United States has many places where network transmission has entered into cooperation with cable television, whose bandwidth can be increased many times over, which will raise the quality of network education.

"The tendency will be for internet and cable television to be combined," says Chan Takwai. Then, internet networks, with visual data and simultaneous interactive capabilities, will penetrate into every home.

We can imagine that courses on the net will continue to increase, and come in from every place in the world. On the wings of science and technology, we may see spread in front of our eyes a palace of learning where there will be no walls and no international boundaries.

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In the "Video Classroom" at Ilan, the classmates of the county government are attentively listening to a National Taiwan University professor's lecture transmitted from Taipei. Distance learning allows the classroom to transcend space, to increase the abundance of educational materials in remote places.

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On the other end, in the "Main Broadcasting Studio Classroom," the teacher is engaged in exposition while facing the large screen. It would appear that to an experienced teacher, distance is no object at all.

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Wang Chiensheng, who has suffered a serious spinal injury, has taken advantage of the gift of distance learning over the network. Presently, he has already learned to use hypertext programming languages. His smiling face once again expresses his confidence and hope for the future.

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Students of National Taiwan University Medical School at the internship class in Chinshan-on the main campus, the teacher asks about the patient's condition over the teleconferencing system, and discusses the method of treatment with the students in attendance.

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Besides providing information and entertainment, more and more educational curricula will appear on the Internet. In the future, when it will have the capability to transmit video information, there will be unlimited potential for its applications in distance learning. (photo by Diago Chiu)

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Now a lifetime of learning is no longer a fable. Can you imagine, when Generation X and Generation Y have become old and grey, what kind of scenes there will be in their lifetimes of learning? (photo by Vincent Chang)

Wang Chien-sheng, who has suffered a serious spinal injury, has taken advantage of the gift of distance learning over the network. Presently, he has already learned to use hypertext programming languages. His smiling face once again expresses his confidence and hope for the future.

Students of National Taiwan University Medical School at the internship class in Chinshan--on the main campus, the teacher asks about the patient's condition over the teleconferencing system, and discusses the method of treatment with the students in attendance.

Besides providing information and entertainment, more and more education al curricula will appear on the Internet. In the future, when it will have the capability to transmit video information, there will be unlimited potential for its applications in distance learning. （photo by Diago Chiu）

Now a lifetime of learning is no longer a fable. Can you imagine, when Generation X and Generation Y have become old and grey, what kind of scenes there will be in their lifetimes of learning? （photo by Vincent C hang）