Marcia Bankirer, director of extension and continuing education at Iowa State, will co-facilitate a presentation at the Articulation Conference to be held Wednesday, April 2 at the University of Northern Iowa.

This spring’s Articulation Conference, sponsored by the state Board of Regents Committee on Educational Relations, will focus on the future of distance learning in Iowa.

This will be the first time Bankirer has attended the conference, she said. She said the conference was primarily for regents before and she didn’t realize it was for faculty as well.

Bankirer said the conference would be beneficial for faculty to attend because “it puts them in touch with other faculty, other ways of teaching and allows faculty to share their expertise and learn from their colleagues.”

Bankirer will co-facilitate the 9:45 a.m. session on “The Regents’ Universities Strategic Plan for Off-Campus Programming” with Glenn Hansen, dean of the College of continuing Education at the University of Northern Iowa, and Emmett J. Vaughn, dean of the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Iowa.

Bankirer and her colleagues will focus on distance education and what it means for the regents, she said.

They will give an overview of the demographics of the state for higher education and how distance learning helps the universities reach “students whenever, wherever they are,” she said, through using technology.

Bankirer said it is possible through distance learning for a person to get a degree without ever setting foot on campus, although she said it is rare that they would do so without coming to campus for some class.

Distance Education, she said, is “just about like being in a regular classroom,” except classes are taken using tools like the Internet.

Some Web course professors have said “they are having more interaction on e-mail than they would with a regular live class in front of them,” Bankirer said.

Faculty design distance education courses using a variety of tools. For example, Biology 103 uses audio lectures on computers through real audio concurrently with slides stored in a file on the Web, Bankirer said. Students also do assignments and have discussions through the Web.

“It is changing the way people teach and learn,” Bankirer said. She said the distance education classes are more flexible, which appeals to a lot of working adults.

Iowa Communications Network connects over 400 classrooms around the state, including five at ISU, Bankirer said.

She said Iowa is one of the only states with such an extensive communications network.

Students can work on their masters in family and consumer sciences in Council Bluffs or Davenport if they want.

Agricultural and business degrees, a program called Master of School Mathematics and Web-based courses in biology and agronomy are all part of the distance learning program, she said.

Bankirer said the regents’ goal is to expand the program to include 800 classrooms by 1999 and especially to add more classrooms directly connected to the three regents universities.

She said they also want to expand programming in liberal studies and work on a two-plus-two program for students to take their first two years of classes at community colleges and their last two years at the regents schools.

Another goal, she said, is to create more regents resource centers. There is currently only one, which is located in Council Bluffs on the campus of the School for the Deaf.

Resource centers, she said, “work to keep an eye on the needs of communities in those areas,” as well as facilitating registration, helping to proctor exams and working with advisers to schedule time to visit with students.

Bankirer said the session will include a presentation of their plans for distance learning, group discussion and a question and answer session.

The conference will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

There is a registration fee of $15 for the conference. Anyone interested in attending should contact Dorothy Blair at 294-8497 or by e-mail at [email protected].

Lunch is included in the registration fee.