“We are so pleased with the book — we’re so impressed with it — that we’re using it in our regular on-campus health classes, too. You’re not compromising anything by using it in an on-campus class. We like the arrangement of chapters, the way it’s made more interesting via its ‘magazine’ look — the articles within articles, the vignettes, the charts and graphs, the use of graphics, pictures, color. Black & white wouldn’t cut it anymore on a video, and black & white doesn’t cut it in textbooks. The books have to ‘pop’ visually — students expect more visually today.”

“I gave the telecourse midterm recently, and asked for general comments at the end of the exam. All of the comments were positive — the students say that the videos really hold their attention. They know that course videos can be everything from boring to as good as a TV special, and they say that these are so professionally done that they could work as stand-alone specials on a given topic. With videos, some tend to be oriented to an 18-year-old audience, and some to adults. These seem to cut across age barriers — they’re like 20/20 or 60 Minutes, which are presented in a way that doesn’t talk down and doesn’t talk up to people. Our students can either watch the episodes on-air, check out the tapes, or purchase the set in the bookstore. They say that they can watch the episodes out of order — if they’re watching on air and miss an episode, they can just go check it out later.”

“We have 900 distance learning students, and 25 percent of them are taking more than one course. They tell us that, by far, this is the best telecourse production they’ve seen — it’s new, it’s fresh, it moves quickly. When people ask me why they might want to take a telecourse instead of coming to campus, I tell them that on tape, you can see interviews with famous people — that doesn’t happen in a classroom. On tape, they can hear and see people relate their health experiences first-hand, and it’s more personal than me lecturing live on the subject. I can’t tell them about childbirth — but someone in the series can. They can share what it’s like to care for others, to deal with peoples’ disease processes.”

“And the series gives students a global view. The first two episodes talk about Doctors Without Borders, and that helps students develop a different attitude about our own health care system. We gripe about our system — about the cost, about having free medical care for everyone — but when they look at health care in other countries, they start to appreciate what we do have a little more.”

“We use e-mail a lot. My students send me messages all the time. We can contact one another in ways we couldn’t ten years ago. I taught a different health course of yours ten years ago, and I felt disenfranchised from my students. I don’t anymore — they can ask me questions more privately, and we can communicate on their own time frame, no matter what their work schedule or their child care needs or their access to transportation. We have a number of working moms taking the class — many of them couldn’t take the class if it weren’t a telecourse. We even have one family — both parents and their son — who are all taking the class. They watch the tapes together, discuss them — they have their own study group!”

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