Distance Education is a big growth area for the Extension School, judging by the increase in course offerings and even a all-remote certificate program (in applied sciences, and environmental management).
While I haven't tried any distance education courses at the Extension School, I might do so in the future, as one of Harvard's foremost China scholars -- Peter Bol -- offers a course called "Traditions and Transformations in China." It's actually a Faculty of Arts and Sciences course offered to Harvard College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences students "live" during the day, while Extension School students can watch the recorded lectures at night (or whenever is convenenient). The course covers a lot of ancient history, as opposed to Professor Kuhn's classes on China, which focus on modern Chinese history -- Qing, Republican, and People's Republic.
However, the one thing that may prevent me from taking this class is one of the technical requirements. Not the connection issue (while I only have dial-up at home, it's enough to participate in this course) but the media player issue. Everyone, regardless of operating system, has to use Real media players.
You may not know Real by name, but you probably have seen it on your machine, especially if you are a Windows user. It's the software which requires irritating and often deceptive installation and registration processes, attempts to take over all music and video-playing duties on your machine, and displays advertising and promotions from the system tray even when you are not using it! It's often called "scumware" by certain segments of Internet community.
Why the Extension School settled on this technology is beyond me -- Real's corporate, advertising-centric profile is totally at odds with the purpose of Distance Education -- but I hope that the school branches into open formats that don't require Real, or at least formats that can be played on the default, pre-installed media players for Windows (Windows Media Player) and Quicktime (Apple).
1 comment:
I think they use real because it will work on OS X, Linux, and Windows and allows them to sync the video with the slides.
Stanford uses Windows Media player, but I think it will only work with Windows and IE. Also when they started using Real several years ago, I don't think the company was known for being quite as deceptive as they are now.
All in all the Real Player works well for Harvards classes once you get it installed. Their choices are limited if they want to have cross platform compatibility
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