Distance education director on board

His biggest challenge? Teaching teachers.

Geoff Freemen calls it faculty training and as the newly appointed director of distance learning, it's the highest hurdle he's facing at MUSC. It's persuading the university's faculty to size up the new educational concept and get them over it.

“Some of them are on the leading edge of the technology,” Freeman said, “and others are scared to touch a computer.”

Freeman, who comes to MUSC from a post as assistant dean for continuing education and director of distance education at Aiken Technical College, has coaxed faculty over that hurdle before, and he's sure he can do it again. At his post in Aiken, Freeman established the school's distance learning system in response to a state-mandated distance learning system for South Carolina technical colleges. Large schools like Trident Technical College were already well on the way, but not Aiken.

He said the best way to introduce the uninitiated to distance learning technology is through those faculty members who have already bought into it and found its benefits extend beyond just a reach to remote locations.

“I try to make the early adopters instructors,” Freeman said, “and let them share their enthusiasm.” The technology actually assists a teacher's ability to transfer information, stimulate discussion and make learning happen.

“Why are you trying to take students out of my classroom?” Freeman said the pop-question fired at him by an irate faculty member passing him in a hallway at Aiken Technical College hit him so hard he could only mumble an empty answer. He later sought out the faculty member to give him a full response.

But the experience showed him how threatened some people feel when confronted with a new technology. “I explained to him that distance learning doesn't take students out of the classroom, it puts more students in the classroom,” Freeman said.

By providing a distance education service at the university level, Freeman intends to serve as a central point of contact for faculty embarking on the new teaching methods and techniques. He said he depends heavily on technical support from the audio-visual, computing, and television services, and from the library's media services.

“Most people think distance education is what we call compressed video,” Freeman said. “They envision people in remote locations seeing and talking to each other through video and audio transmission.”

But it's more than that, and it's not particularly new. Distance education began with the correspondence course, and it includes video tapes and web-based courses on the Internet. Its effect is to remove the classroom walls to allow students to register, pay their tuition, listen to lectures, engage in discussions, and submit their lessons from most anywhere in the world.

Following 14 years of active-duty in the U.S. Army, Geoff Freeman cheerfully accepted a post-Desert Storm discharge and saw it as a chance to use his new-found career interest, a blend of teaching and technology. He worked with a number of military contractors and an Atlanta-based software firm before joining Aiken Technical College. Freeman holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee and a masters degree in information systems from the Florida Institute of Technology. He is currently enrolled in the doctoral program in curriculum and instruction at the University of South Carolina. His post at MUSC replaces that held by Lisa Minnick, former director of distance education. Freeman reports to the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. Freeman's office is located at 21 Ehrhardt St. He can be reached at 953-0856. "I'm a technology geek," he said. "I love computers, but I still don't completely trust them."

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