Professors who live in Sun City embrace technology

Teachers living in Sun City give new computer programs and other electronic teaching assistants an "A" for facilitating learning, especially at the college level.

One of these Sun City residents, Dr. Charles Keith, professor and chairman of Science and Mathematics at the University of South Carolina Beaufort (USCB), says his laptop computer is the essential link between his students and himself.

"Blackboard" is the appropriate name of the computer program Keith uses in his neurobiology class. A university rule, says all USCB professors must load their course syllabuses onto the program, and many place readings and assignments there too.

If students don't own computers, they can use the university library's computers, Keith notes. For backup,he also supplies a paper copy of his syllabus.

Does that mean his students can skip classes? Hardly. As good as computers are for teaching, nothing substitutes for class attendance, Keith feels.

Another computer program used for teaching is called "Tegrity" which automatically captures, stores and indexes class sessions. "It's great when (the students) are studying for exams," Keith explains.

"Tegrity" and "Blackboard" are also a tremendous boon to USCB's nursing program, notes Dr. Sue Ellen Johnson, who lives in Sun City Hilton Head and teaches as an assistant professor of Nursing at USCB. "I record all classroom sessions on "Tegrity' including the question and answer periods," she explains.

She also points out the school's computerized, lifesize mannequin that her nursing students use for hands-on, practical experience. The mannequin not only reproduces a real patient's measurable changes in blood pressure, pulse rate, and more, under various medical situations, but actually critiques the student's actions and delivers a printout so teacher and students can see what was done and discuss what, if any, treatments were called for.

Another Sun City resident, Jim Lancaster, teaches college students from his home as well as in a classroom. With microphone, ear phones and his computer, Lancaster remotely teaches leadership courses to Notre Dame University students in Elkhart, Indiana. In Bluffton and Beaufort, he has also taught Marketing 101 to students at the Technical College of the Lowcountry (TCL).

Professors may also use interactive conference calls through which they and their students will see and talk to each other via their computer monitors.

Elaine Cope, who is developmental instructor in English and Reading at Technical College of the Lowcountry, is another Sun City resident who remains happily engaged in the teaching profession and wholeheartedly approves of today's electronic educational assistants. Cope's students range in age from recent high school graduates, who may need remedial language or composition studies before beginning their college curricula, to those who have been working for years before going back to school.

Students come to class for lectures, but Cope often emails them their assignments and then grades and returns their work. Her Tuesday morning class is conducted totally online from her classroom in TCL's New River building, she says.

If they need extra help, however, Cope aids them in the old-fashioned way: in person.