Penn to offer distance-learning to high schools

The interactive courses in anthropology and calculus will be offered at eight site nationwide. Continuing its effort to market the Penn brand name, administrators are reaching out to high school students with a series of new classes designed to expand the University's share of the educational market. Penn will combine forces with the Baltimore-based Caliber Learning Network to provide distributed learning -- otherwise known as distance learning -- classes for high school students, Interim Provost Michael Wachter announced yesterday. The courses in anthropology and calculus will be offered at eight sites across the country simultaneously via digital satellite television and advanced computer connections. Students in the two classes offered through the new PennAdvance Program will interact with each other and with their professors in real-time discussions with the aid of Caliber's videoconferencing technology. Classes for the approximately 50 students enrolled this fall begin on Saturday. Penn has also contracted with Caliber -- a for-profit partnership of Sylvan Learning Centers and telecommunications giant MCI WorldCom Inc. -- to offer "Wharton Direct" executive-education classes. "I think distributed learning puts higher education in a new, very dynamic period of exciting opportunities," Wachter said. "This is a huge new market for the University." For the two classes offered by PennAdvance this fall, Mathematics Department Chairperson Dennis DeTurck will teach the popular Mathematics 141: Calculus for the Natural Sciences, while Anthropology Professor Alan Mann will lead Anthropology 3: Humans in the Natural World, a class on human evolution. Introductory classes in psychology, calculus and economics will be offered in the spring, with three or four courses being offered every semester thereafter, according to School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston. About 60,000 students in eight targeted markets -- including Boston, Atlanta and Dallas -- received direct-mail information from the University based on test scores obtained from the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service. Each applicant had to submit an essay, letters of recommendation and a high school transcript to gain admittance to the program. "We are aiming at a very talented group of high school students," Preston said. "What we're offering them is easy access to Penn courses and Penn faculty [while] we are hoping to increase Penn's visibility among talented high school students." Preston added that the PennAdvance courses are not intended to replace regular high school curricula. "This is not Advanced Placement," he said, referring to the high-level high school classes that many colleges accept for credit. "This is the real thing." Classes will be held for three hours every Saturday for 10 weeks, beginning this weekend. Additionally, students will be expected to work "asynchronously" for an additional hour a week on course material found on e-mail and the World Wide Web, bringing the total work time to 40 hours per class. The classes will be conducted not at the students' high schools, but at Caliber centers outfitted with video screens and computer terminals. Students will be able to ask questions of their professors during lectures by e-mailing a "content specialist," a teaching assistant who will communicate students' questions and comments directly to the professor. For their part, the participating Penn professors will teach out of an old television studio at 46th and Market streets -- the first built in the country -- renovated to Caliber's specifications, according to Associate Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing Michael Eleey. Each class will cost $1,220, though administrators said they expected costs to rise several hundred dollars to the price charged for summer school classes. Limited financial aid was made available, Wachter said. Administrators also expressed confidence that the program would expand as students and parents expressed a preference for spring and summer classes. "We are planning on expanding the program rapidly and looking at 35 to 40 [participating learning centers] within the next couple years," Preston said. While DeTurck and Mann both said they were at first "skeptical" of distance learning, they optimistic for the program's chances of success. "It represents the coming fashion in teaching," DeTurck said. "I think I can give students a taste of a Penn class." But Mann cautioned against students bypassing the college experience in favor of digital classrooms. "I think it's a delusion to replace being there," he said. Wachter noted that the University's other distributed learning initiative is faring well in its first weeks. He said that 143 students are enrolled in "Building a Business Case," the first six-week Wharton Direct class, now being offered in 16 Caliber centers nationwide. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Ethan Kross contributed to this article.

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