Distance Education (DE) in the College of Engineering was started in January 1999 when the Dean of Engineering at that time, Robert D. Lynch, expressed an interest in the topic. Using strategic planning grants as well as financing from the Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, a task force was assembled to explore avenues of technology that would provide the College of Engineering with a state-of-the-art DE system. Headed by faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a few dedicated undergraduate students, the group found and purchased the necessary technology to provide Distance Education to the students.

The system uses rich media web presentation, as well as Video Teleconferencing (VTC) systems to deliver course material live to those who cannot physically be on campus. This dual broadcast allows the distance program to exactly mimic the in-class experience. A server with almost a terabyte of disk space is available and dedicated only to delivery of the material both live and on-demand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Center for Engineering Education and Research (CEER) is home to the system. The CEER facilities can hold 70 in-class students and up to 400 in the virtual classroom housed within the servers. Using tablet PC's and WebCT integrated with the VTC and Rich Media, the learning experience is of the highest quality for both in-class and DE students. The system makes use of public and free a/v players, so there is no special software to buy.

The robust system has other uses as well. It has also been used to provide supplemental course material to other non-graduate courses. The academic experience has not been limited to just engineering curriculums either. Both the Villanova School of Business and the College of Nursing have used the facilities to reach out to students across the web who, for one reason or another, could not attend the classroom. Thanks to our virtual classroom, they did not need to either.

Highlights

• Today, over 12 full courses are taught each semester, with more being offered each semester.
• In the Fall of 2003, the first fully online Master's degree at Villanova was offered in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• In 2004, Mechanical Engineering did the same.
• ECE and ChE went online in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
• In 2007, the College will offer the entire program online.