Ray Yost earned a doctorate from the University of Arizona while working full time for Rio Tinto Minerals. In the process, he wrote a thesis that saved the company's boron operations tens of millions of dollars.

All this happened while he was living in California. He set foot on the Arizona campus only a handful of times during the three years needed to earn his geological engineering degree. Everything else was done through the College of Engineering distance learning program.

"I had talked about returning to school as an on-campus student for a while," said Yost, who earned his master's degree on the UA campus in the late 1990s. "But that just wasn't going to work with my family obligations, career and financial situation."

Then UA's mining and geological engineering department, or MGE, began offering master's and doctoral degrees remotely, and Yost saw his chance to fulfill his PhD dreams while pursuing his career. The result was a winning situation for himself, his company and UA. "The UA increases enrollment, the student gets a high-quality education, and the company gets the financial benefit of the PhD research project," he said.

Going the Distance

MGE is one of three units in UA Engineering that offers distance learning degrees. Systems and industrial engineering, or SIE, and the engineering management program also offer degrees under the program, and electrical engineering and civil engineering offer some courses, said R.D. Eckhoff, director of the engineering professional development program, which coordinates the distance learning programs and also provides support for academic conferences.

Although the Arizona Board of Regents originally encouraged the state's three universities to set up distance learning programs to serve people in rural areas, the program also benefits industry partners and even students who attend class on campus.

MGE got involved because mining companies can't find enough mining and geological engineers and are hiring engineers who don't have a background in mining, said MGE department head Mary Poulton. "This has created a need for continuing education to bring new workers up to speed in the industry."

Meanwhile, on-campus students can access the web-based lectures and review exactly what their instructor said in class that day, last week or any time during the semester. "This helps them improve their understanding of the material," said Mike Arnold, director of the UA engineering management program. "Replay for on-campus students is one of the greatest benefits of distance learning that wasn't fully appreciated when it was first set up."

"Distance learning actually is changing the pedagogy for the way we teach," Poulton added. "Now an instructor can treat a lecture as homework reading. Students view the lecture before they come to class and then the class period can be a session where the instructor directly engages with the students to work on problems." Both the students and instructor get immediate feedback on how well the students understand the concepts.

In addition, once a lecture is recorded, it can often be used for several semesters, and instructors can devote more time to working directly with students instead of preparing and delivering the same lecture semester after semester.

Educational Efficiency

Distance learning also is making graduate education more efficient because universities are pooling resources, making it unnecessary for every university to teach every course.

"Mining engineering programs across the country are small and do not have enough faculty to handle the needs of all their continuing education students," Poulton said. So students enrolled in MGE's distance learning program also can apply courses from several other universities to their degree requirements. These include the University of British Columbia, University of Pittsburgh and the Colorado School of Mines.

All of this has been accomplished on a pay-as-you-go basis, Eckhoff added. Engineering professional development is one of UA's cost-recovery programs, meaning it must be self-supporting and at least break even financially every year. The College of Engineering originally used a KUAT video lab in the Harvill Building to record continuing education classes.

"We took income from the first three years of offering courses through the Harvill facility and used it to help build a video classroom in SIE," Eckhoff said. The remainder of the cost was funded by SIE. Meanwhile, MGE used part of a gift from David and Edith Lowell to add video capabilities to the department's largest classroom and a conference room.

"A third video classroom is in the planning stages, and our goal is to have a classroom equipped for distance learning in every engineering unit," Eckhoff said.

Distance learning students see the classes either in real time through streaming web video or as delayed broadcasts on their computer. The screen is split, with one frame showing the instructor and class and the other focused on the instructor's notes or other material. This latter frame can show videos, the instructor's computer screen or what the instructor is writing on a smart board.

"Our classes don't depend on the traditional white board because we don't want the instructors' backs to the camera," Eckhoff noted. Instead, the instructor writes on a desktop smart board while facing the class, and their notes appear on the distance student's screen, while also being projected behind the instructor for students in the classroom.

When participating in real time, distance learning students can even ask questions, and the image from their computer camera can be projected on the classroom screen so those in the class can see them.

Undergraduate Courses Next?

Although some undergraduate courses are offered, there are no distance learning degrees for undergrads because college administrators believe these students need the additional support of the on-campus environment. Distance learning classes also aren't well suited for teaching hands-on lab classes. "Virtual labs and simulations are possible, but they often take a lot of work to create and need special software," Eckhoff said. "So, in most cases, they are not practical yet. However, that will come, eventually, as the technology improves."

For working engineers who can't leave their careers to study on campus, and for students in rural areas who can't be away at one of the state's three universities, distance learning can be a life-changing opportunity.

"Getting the PhD has been a goal of mine for a long time, to open some other career doors in terms of being able to teach or to be a research scientist," Yost said. "You're getting a high-quality education from this because it's like you're in the classroom."

Yost also noted that distance learning students aren't second class. "Everybody there in distance learning, in the department, over in the graduate college, were all so cognizant that I was a distance learning student, and they were just amazing in terms of taking care of me and helping me through the process," he said. "They're 100 percent behind it, and went above and beyond in so many cases to help me out. I was really impressed with the support services from so many different groups on campus."