Community College of Spokane issued the following announcement.
Did you know CCS first dipped its extra-large, hairy toes into remote learning as far back as 1978 (the same year the musical film “Grease” was released)?
Legend has it, distance-education courses (offline, of course) were first proctored over televisions in what’s now called telecourses. For you Zoomers out there, TVs didn’t always have WiFi access and come preloaded with Netflix.
Then in the 1990s, some faculty began experimenting with online supplements to telecourses – a true innovation, especially considering internet connections were reliant on nobody in the household picking up a phone while dialed in. Your parents had to make an important call? Well too bad, DAD, I’m studying.
It wasn’t until 1997 – just a year before NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys really took off – that CCS’ first completely online course was offered. The late 1990s to early 2000s online courses were primarily offered through the Washington Online consortium, a subset of the Washington Community and Technical College System. Though, it’s believed many were taught by our own CCS faculty.
By 2005 (when filmmaker Michael Bay made arguably his best film, “The Island”), our community colleges licensed a learning management system and offered courses through our own platform. Fast forward to today, and many courses at Spokane Community College and Spokane Falls Community College are taught either completely online or with a mixture of online elements.
Whether a TV should be involved is completely up to the instructor.
Original source can be found here.
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