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The Houston Foresight graduate program is running an experiment this semester: there will be no physical classroom for any of its classes! We will still have our regular class meetings at 5:30pm CST each evening, but the classes will be conducting entirely over Zoom.
This move represents the culmination of a long-developing trend. Former Program Coordinator Dr. Peter Bishop introduced the online version a couple of decades ago. He gradually brought each course online until the entire curriculum could be done from a distance. In those early days, the vast majority of students were still in the physical classroom. A few bold pioneers did it from a distance. All will remember the enormous technical difficulties that plagued the early days. We used Skype for a while and had a polycom for students to phone into. More often than not, screeches, garbled voices, and disconnects were part of the classes. One truly had to be committed to do the distance thing in the beginning.
As Moore’s Law would suggest, the technology gradually but continually improved. We experimented with a variety of systems. Some were better than others, but all ultimately hobbled by the need for more bandwidth. With the last decade, however, the problems became less frequent and the experience improved. As this happened, the ratio between students in the classroom and those online began to shift. I’m going to guess that about 7 years ago, the lines crossed, and the online students began to outnumber those in classroom. From that point forward, each semester saw an increase in virtual students. We knew the game was over when local Houston students began remoting in rather than face the vicious Houston rush hour traffic. A few years ago, I taught my first empty classroom. It was a little strange, but by then I had been acclimated (though I got a few strange looks from students passing by). Last fall, I had one class with one student who occasionally dropped in, and another that never had a student come to the classroom.
Thus, I decided it was time. The customers, our students, have “voted with their feet.” It is technically easier to do a class when everyone is online compared to do a mix of physical and online, so the choice became obvious. But it is an experiment. We’ll see how it goes. — Andy Hines
Congratulations Andy on this next step in transforming the program !!!