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Faculty Spotlight

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Ten Years Running

For the past 10 years, various programs at the University of Tennessee have used the Centra software, branded LiveOnline@UT,  to deliver live, online classes to students at a distance.  The Centra software includes Voice over IP technology for live, 2-way audio, interactive features such as polling, text chat, and application sharing, as well as a shared whiteboard.  These features, as well as many more, allow professors to mimic a face to face classroom environment in an online classroom.  Some departments and individual professors have taken advantage of this online environment and put the software to new and inventive uses.

The Beginnings: Why Centra?

In the 1990s the University of Tennessee formed the Maintenance and Reliability Center and there was industrial interest to have the College of Engineering offer courses in that field.  After hearing about the Physician’s Executive MBA’s success with the Centra software, the center investigated what was available and submitted the technology as part of a bid for a National Science Foundation grant to develop a Graduate Certificate. 

Dr. Hines taught the first Centra-delivered distance course in the college and continues teaching them to the present, attracting students from as far away as São Paulo, Brazil.  Following that initial success, the Nuclear Engineering department was seeking to increase student enrollments.  Due to a decline in commercial nuclear engineering, enrollment was down and the department was motivated to try new ways of reaching potential students.  The faculty decided to meet the national need, rolled out a Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering in 1999, and graduate enrollment increased 40%.  The Nuclear Engineering classes are typically taught in a dual delivery format, where some students are physically in a classroom with the professor, and others are at their homes or work for the live classes.  The sessions are also recorded for reference or for students who are unable to attend the live online or classroom sessions.



Dr. Hines describes his use of Centra, Nuclear Engineering’s dual delivery format and the equipment he uses to support the technology. 

Transcript

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