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UA's e-campus open for business

The University of Arizona gained 30 MBA students last Wednesday, 10 of whom will never attend classes in Tucson.

Instead, they are the first to participate in the Masters of Business Administration distance-learning program offered by the Eller College of Business and Public Administration.

Instead of televised or Internet-based classes, the program links two classrooms in real-time.

One is located on the lower level of University of Arizona's McClelland Hall, and one is in the 3-Com educational building in Santa Clara, Calif. The 3-Com building is part of a high-tech company that also provides educational opportunities to working professionals, according to Diana Hunter, director of communications for the Eller College.

The technology for the "virtual classroom" is being provided by TeleSuite, which has developed a new life-sized virtual conferencing system.

"This technology captures everyone in the classroom, including the faculty member," said Susie Wong, Eller College associate dean of graduate professional programs. "People don't have to feel like they're on-camera - the cameras are transparent to what's happening in the room, so you're really not aware of them."

Hunter said the program is being marketed to working professionals in Silicon Valley who would rather not leave their jobs to get an MBA.

"Most of these people have families and are working full-time," Hunter said. "They'll also be going to school full-time, so it takes a real type-A person to complete this program. They are planning to use their MBA degree to move up in their companies' ranks."

Students in Silicon Valley pay about $20,000 per year in tuition, and the Eller MBA program lasts 24 months. Homework is assigned by the professor in the syllabus and is submitted by e-mail or fax, Hunter said.

Hunter added that the UA is the first institution to utilize a virtual classroom.

"We are a beta test site for this technology and for the facility," Hunter said. "There are other schools looking at it, and we are helping to showcase it to other schools."

Hunter and Wong said they believe that the technology will be used widely in the future.

"You will also see this technology in use by the corporate sector," Wong said. "Not only for recruiting programs, but for carrying on their day-to-day work."

The TeleSuite e-classroom is designed to be "transparent," according to a TeleSuite press release. It uses T1 data transfer lines to connect two sites in real-time and uses two separate cameras to create depth perception, so images on the monitors seem more three-dimensional.

"There's no lag with any talking, or if someone raises their hand, it doesn't leave trails on the monitor," Hunter said.

Wong said the choice to initially offer the program to professionals in Silicon Valley was prompted by alumni considerations as much as technology.

"Many of our graduates are recruited by those (high-tech) companies," Wong said. "We have a couple of people in this program who were also undergraduates in the Eller College."

"Now they can keep their jobs in Silicon Valley and still get their Eller MBA," she said. "It's been really nice linking up with some of the alumni."

Wong added that the technology may eventually be used to make other UA graduate degrees available virtually.

"The graduate college is very interested in trying to provide different graduate programs from all over the university to other places across the United States," Wong said.