An ISU professor explained the benefits of classes taught through the Iowa Communications Network Thursday.

W. Robert Stephenson, university professor of statistics, presented “Filmed in Front of a Live Audience: Technology for Distance Education.”

Stephenson, the fifth person recognized in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Master Teacher series, began with a prologue explaining how he got into the business of distance education.

“In 1993, statisticians from General Motors came to Iowa State looking for a course developed for engineers and managers to show them the practical applications for statistics in their industry,” he said.

The first course was offered in 1994, Stephenson said, and more off-campus courses stemmed from it.

“At that time, General Motors didn’t even have e-mail to the outside world,” he said, because security concerns prevented employees from having access to the World Wide Web.

Since then, employees from General Motors have received master’s degrees from Iowa State, having only set foot on campus once for the oral exam, he said.

Stephenson followed the prologue with a discussion of videotape, Power Point and Web sites.

“I’m not going to show you what has been done with this applied statistics course,” he said. Instead, Stephenson wanted to show how distance education is “palpable” to off-campus students.

“You can’t just make one static tape,” he said.

The lecture was given in Room 1344 in Howe Hall, so audience members could compare what an on-campus student could see compared to an off-campus student, Stephenson said. He then demonstrated several different ways in which a lecture could be seen and heard more clearly by off-campus students.

“I don’t use the whiteboard at all in my distance classrooms,” Stephenson said.

He also demonstrated how off-campus students viewing the class could not only watch him giving the lecture but also the Power Point slide at the same time.

“[The technical assistant is] the driver, I’m the tour guide,” he said. “In an ICN room, you are doing both.”

Allan Schmidt, manager of instructor development at the Instructional Technology Center, said Stephenson’s lecture touched all the technology bases.

“I think that he demonstrated an excellent mix of learning technology. He used video technology, Power Point, electronic textbook and paper and pen in an integrated manner,” he said.