Faculty Spotlight
February - March 2000
Physiology in a Non-Physical SpaceDr. Hugh WelchDepartment of BioChemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology |
"I became interested in distance learning as a result of being offered a visiting
professorship out of state during a period when I was to be lecturing
for a month at a university in Denmark. The only way I could be
in two places at once was by using technology, in this case email.
I spent a month at the US University, and then conducted the assignments
and communication via email from the Danish University. It worked ok, at least well enough to see the possibilities.
"Since then, I have been involved in a pilot project here at UT to evaluate the prospects for offering a large multi-section course in Human Physiology using the Internet. It is an important service course for a number of programs in Health Professions, and the number of available (and qualified) instructors has decreased over the past few years.
"The challenge with this was to see if would be possible to offer a course with a large Internet component that maintained a high standard of student performance and would be well received by the students.
"This effort really began through the support of the department head, Dr. John Koontz, who had already been experimenting with the use of Internet in his large Biochemistry course. He provided the resources and put up some seed money for the project. I regard this a model for the way that university administrators should go about this; there needs to be support--in time and hardware--to develop these courses.
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