High-tech higher education

Paper notebooks have been replaced by notebook computers

By Nick Bryant in Washington

A university almost as old as the United States itself is providing higher education for a high-tech age.

Paper notebooks have been replaced by notebook computers in an economics class at Wake Forest University.

Education has gone virtual at this university

Every single student is plugged in and online.

Students surf the Web for the information they need, and multimedia presentations have become as commonplace as essays.

Teaching transformed

The Internet Generation needed fully interactive study.

Economics professor David Brown, who helped develop the online curriculum, says it breaks down communication barriers among students, as well as between students and professors.

"There is much more dialogue. There is much more conversation back and forth," Professor Brown said. "It makes the communication almost seamless."

Bored with books

Students' rooms are wired too

Every room on the campus has been wired, with course materials available online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Students like freshman Gary Fung love it. He cannot imagine life without his laptop, and thinks he would be bored with old-school education.

"If I didn't have my computer, I would just sit at my desk reading books without pictures and thousands of words," he said.

Active learning

Some teachers have even taken to teaching their classes online.

Students can view lectures online anytime

Online multimedia cybershows cover basic class concepts, freeing up class time.

"My goal was to transfer what I used to do in the classroom, outside the classroom in an efficient way, leveraging the technology," said Gordon E McCray, an assistant business professor.

"I could fundamentally change what I do in the classroom so I could engage in active learning - case studies, discussions and debates," he added.

Plusses and minuses

But there are some drawbacks to the modern wired university.

• The equipment is expensive
• It favours the computer literate
• It might widen the digital divide between rich institutions and poor.

Even so, Wake Forest University thinks its experiment is working.

Graduates this spring are the first to complete a fully wired curriculum

This year's graduates, the Class of 2000, will be the first to complete four full years of laptop-based study, so it is too early to say how their final grades will be affected.

But the dropout rate has fallen significantly, and a higher proportion of students will finish their studies than ever before.

And they will leave university, online graduates for an online age.