by Lucille Salerno

Teacher Joel Hartman presents a course at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Missouri, Columbia, while students at a rural site take part on screen via interactive television.

The role of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Missouri, Columbia, as a provider of distance learning to rural elders began through a series of coincidences. In July 2005, we moved into our current home -- a beautiful, fully accessible, ground-level facility with four classrooms, a comfortable lounge and a large break room. At the time, those features were the reason we signed a five-year lease: We knew they would provide the amount and type of space we needed to offer courses on site for local elders.

When we moved into our new facility, we were completely unaware of the spectacular additional potential it held. The building had formerly been the state training site for grammar-school teachers in need of comprehensive technological schooling. To expand this training to teachers across the state, the administrators of the program had constructed a fiber-optic network linking the facility to school systems and libraries throughout Missouri. We soon recognized that we also had the ability to transmit our own lifelong learning courses. But to which destinations? And to which populations of potential learners?

Another discovery provided the answers. Ten years earlier, a university vice president had the foresight to establish fiber-optic linkages to 10 university extension centers in small towns in the most sparsely populated areas of our state -- transforming the 10 locations into telecommunication resource centers equipped to offer teleconferencing with live two-way interaction. These areas had no continuing education services like ours for older adults. A coordinator of one of these centers who happened upon our course catalog telephoned to ask if we were willing to serve elders in his area. By the next semester, we were transmitting our courses to six locations.

Interactive Courses

Rural older adults began to meet in conference rooms at university extension centers to attend our courses. The class with the teacher on site meets at our facility, while the distant class is projected onto a smart board at the front of the room. Sound and light are augmented to enable sharp transmission of images in both directions. The greatest number of distant classes we have served at one time is six; the maximum possible is eight.

In multiple-site transmissions, the visual system is voice-activated -- the distant class that appears on the front screen is the class in which a student is asking a question. The conduit for the entire system is fiber optic cable. Professors conduct class in the traditional manner, enabled by the fact that all participants are able to hear and see each other live. Additional screens at the rear of our classrooms enable the professor to monitor activity in distant classrooms.

Not surprisingly in this farm state, horticulture was the most requested course, followed closely by courses on birding, health, home interior design, creative writing and the Civil War in Missouri. Initially, we offered distance learners the same variety of courses we had created for our local students. As our relationships developed with the rural students, we learned of their interests. For example, one location had experienced an influx of Old Order Mennonite families, and the county director asked us to provide a course about their way of life. A professor emeritus at our university developed a series of classes that traced the history of the Old Order Mennonites from their European roots to their contemporary enclaves.

Partnering With Libraries

Libraries throughout Missouri are gradually acquiring teleconferencing hardware. Just this year, we signed a contract with the Missouri State Library and its rural library network. We now serve three libraries many miles removed from the source of our signal, offering classes on estate planning and current political issues.

We have found that the delivery of courses to distant learners provides more than new information. Just as our local students have experienced, when retirees and those who find themselves alone come together to study, they discover much more than cognitive stimulation. Whether “near” or “distant,” learning in the company of peers awakens, along with the elders’ cognitive powers, the sense of belonging that youth takes for granted.

Lucille Salerno is director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Photo: Steve Morse/University of Missouri Extension

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