Contact: Jim Gardner, Executive Director of University Communications, (973) 596-3433

NEWARK-December. 24, 1997-Broadcasting from Newark to the world, New Jersey Institute of Technology is an unchallenged universal leader in the field of distance learning.

Twenty years ago, NJIT entered the relatively unknown field of distance learning. Today, the university that coined the phrase "Virtual Classroom®" and has registered the term as a trademark, has moved to the head of the class.

With an ever-expanding enrollment of students who are being educated in settings as diverse as the home, the office, the classroom, and everywhere throughout New Jersey, the United States, and even abroad, NJIT makes an impact on education throughout the world.

"Because we have been in it longer than probably anyone else, distance learning has two unique features at NJIT," said Dr. Gale Tenen Spak, executive director of NJIT’s Division of Continuing Professional Education (CPE). "First, I don't think any other university of comparable rank and size has nearly as many course enrollments. NJIT, as an entity, knows how to deliver large volume in distance learning.

"Second, as college administrators across the country join the distance learning bandwagon, they quickly come to learn that to do it correctly requires a holistic approach which involves adjusting nearly every aspect of university operation," Spak continued.

"Because of the duration of our experience, we have more solidly integrated distance learning into the fabric of NJIT than anywhere else. Thus, NJIT as an entity can provide its distant students with the quality and customer service they deserve.

"We have the faculty expertise, structure and volume all in one place," Spak said.

This year, CPE -- in concert with the university’s colleges -- provides access to some 2,500 students enrolled in nearly 5,000 distance learning courses in more than three dozen disciplines. Through NJIT’s distance learning program, which is housed in its division of CPE, students can pursue full undergraduate and graduate degrees, graduate certificates, college courses, advanced placement high school courses and non-credit professional development courses.

As a leader in the field, NJIT has established in-house expertise to deliver more than 100 internally produced multi-media courses. The courses -- sent to student homes and to the classrooms of college students, K through 12 children and professionals -- include computer science, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics and other technical subjects.

"We coined the term Virtual Classroom® and even registered it as a trademark," Spak said "It will be in the dictionary someday and it all started here at NJIT. It's amazing how the words Virtual Classroom® now roll off the lips of people in this field."

At NJIT, the Virtual Classroom® encompasses two distinct methodologies. The first couples World Wide Web Internet connections or computerized conferencing either with stand-alone videotapes, cablecast or public broadcasting. NJIT programs available in their entirety in this methodology include bachelor's degrees in computer science and in information systems; master's degrees in engineering management and in information systems; and 12-credit graduate certificates in "hot employment" tracks such as object-oriented design, client/server architecture, telecommunications networking, project management, health care information systems, and pollution prevention and control.

To date, 50 NJIT faculty have originated courseware for these programs and more than 70 instructors have mentored Virtual Classroom® classes.

The second uses satellite transmission or two-way video simulcast (interactive television) or satellite transmissions in media-rich classrooms equipped with a wide variety of electronics including multiple cameras to capture the expressions of students and instructors in the course of the lesson. Nowadays, two-way video simulcast appears to be the medium of choice when NJIT partners with other organizations from the corporate and collegiate worlds.

For example, today NJIT uses interactive television to provide its master’s degrees and graduate certificates to employees at various locations of Bell Atlantic Corporation and Lucent Technologies, Inc. The same medium is also being employed by teams of faculty from NJIT, Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey which together are teaching their own students courses leading to a Master of Science degree in Biomechanical Engineering.

The real-time visual student/teacher interaction which this medium permits also explains the continued popularity of NJIT satellite-based courses which are offered to employees of Fortune 500 companies through the National Technology University (NTU). Founded to provide graduate courses worldwide via satellite, NTU partners with 46 prominent engineering schools whose faculties conduct the necessary courses and non-credit professional development classes.

Recently, the World Bank invited NJIT to supply elements of its Virtual Classroom® courses to a new initiative known as the African Virtual University (AVU), which will ultimately provide undergraduate degrees to 22 sub-Saharan nations. NJIT has become the lead university for Calculus I and Calculus II, which are being taught to sub-Saharan universities in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

In April 1997, NJIT professor Rose Dios's calculus classes were transmitted via satellite to the participating African universities. Professor Dios conducts weekly problem-solving sessions via live satellite as well as making herself available for real-time question-and-answer feedback sessions with students, which are conducted from NJIT through a combination of the Internet, telephone bridge and/or graphics tablet.

AVU will offer university degree programs in science, technology and medical fields, non-credit training and seminars, remedial instruction, and electronic library services through cost-effective and efficient transmission of video and data resources from the United States and Europe.

Publication in 1978 of the visionary book, "The Network Nation: Human Communications via Computer" by Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, now both distinguished professors in NJIT’s Department of Computer and Information Science, marked the beginning of the university’s first foray into distance learning. In 1994, Hiltz and Turoff, who coined the term computerized conferencing, were presented with Pioneering Awards by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A three-year $700,000 grant from the Alfred Sloan Foundation in 1993 for the development of two distance learning undergraduate degree programs cemented NJIT’s leadership position. A second grant in 1996 for $450,000 is enabling NJIT to institutionalize distance learning across many curricula. At the same time, the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology awarded NJIT and Princeton University a $1.04 million grant to create the New Jersey Multimedia Research Center (NJCMR), which will enable NJIT to reach the next distance learning plateau.

The newly created NJCMR, located at NJIT and Princeton, integrates world-class multimedia research programs at both institutions into one center. NJCMR research laboratories host powerful and networked computing facilities along with state-of-the-art hardware and software for multimedia research.

Since its mission is to advance the application of multimedia technologies in learning environments, the products of NJCMR will find a natural home in the NJIT distance learning programs.

"Thanks to our administration, infrastructure, and research initiatives," Spak said, "the envelope keeps being pushed to give new meaning to the 20-year-old term Virtual Classroom®"

NJIT is a public research university enrolling nearly 8,200 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students in 76 degree programs through its five colleges: Newark College of Engineering, School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, the School of Management and the Albert Dorman Honors College. Research initiatives include manufacturing, microelectronics, transportation, computer science, solar astrophysics, environmental engineering and science, and architecture and building science. U.S. News and World Report's "1998 Annual Guide to America’s Best Colleges" ranked NJIT among the top 175 national universities. Money Magazine's "Best College Buys 1998" rated NJIT as the sixth best value among U.S. science and technology colleges and universities.

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