From behind a lectern in New South Hall, government professor Charles King looks at his students and asks, "What is representation?"
Walking into class, Mark Saliba (F'09) slides into his chair and raises his hand to respond. He's in front of King, but from thousands of miles away at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Saliba and his 22 classmates are visible on a 42-inch portable plasma screen TV.
King sees the Doha students raise their hands, hears them type on their laptops and watches them drink Diet Cokes. But these aren't his only students. A group of six undergraduates from Georgetown's Main Campus fill the seats directly in front of him. They face another plasma TV below his lectern where they can see their SFS-Qatar counterparts and participate in the lecture -- as one class.
"It's so amazing. We're looking right at them … and they're halfway across the world," says Stephanie Frangos (F'09), a member of the Washington, D.C. class. "It's really amazing to see that … we're all hearing the same lecture at the same time."
The course, Comparative Political Systems, is a requirement for international politics majors. And because it's a core social science course for students across the university, the classes often include more than 300 students. This is the first time King, who has taught the course several times, has done so via video-conference with students on two continents.
When King and SFS-Qatar Dean Jim Reardon-Anderson discussed offering the course through distance education, they considered using the video-conference facilities in SFS-Qatar's D.C. office for King's lectures to the Doha students. But after conferring with University Registrar John Q. Pierce, the idea of including students in Washington and in Doha became a possibility.
"It was very exciting, both pedagogically and just in terms of the strategic development of the relationship between the two campuses," King says.
The professor felt it was important to teach the class from a space on Main Campus, and so he worked with University Information Services and Classroom Educational Technology Services (CETS) to conduct a series of experimental test classes in the New South Film Room during the 2006 fall semester.
John Steitz, senior technology manager with CETS and a member of the technical team that supports the class, says the room originally was designed as a space to receive live content being produced off campus. The team reconfigured the room so individuals are able to use it to produce and feed content off campus as well -- resulting in an interactive classroom experience.
"It's important so the students can see their counterparts," Steitz says. "You really couldn’t have the class as an integrated unit unless the students could see each other."
The plasma screen below King's podium that faces the students uses wireless video technology -- the first instance at Georgetown -- to receive images. Microphones are built into the ceiling and three video cameras are installed around the room to capture sound and images of the class. King uses a large projection screen to show PowerPoint slides that the Doha students follow on their laptops.
King says the technology took a bit of getting used to. For example, he had to suppress the urge to move around the room, because he has to remain behind the podium to be in view of the camera. The six students are also clustered in the middle of the aisles in order to be seen on camera.
Waleed El-Sayed (F'09), an Egyptian student at SFS-Qatar, was initially skeptical about the arrangement, but credits King's flexibility with making the class work.
"Professor King very consciously was determined to make this course succeed," El-Sayed says. "He was really available through e-mails, through the office hours video-link. … He was very accommodating for this and really kind in this regard."
Despite the unique technological features, King emphasizes that the class experience is otherwise typical and there are surprising similarities between the students.
"Georgetown students (here) in general are very informed about international politics, they're very articulate," he says. "I think the students out in Doha are exactly the same way."
To encourage interaction between the students in D.C. and Doha, King incorporated a group project into the course syllabus. Each Main Campus student joined a group of Doha students and used lessons learned in class to draft a constitution for student government at SFS-Qatar.
"That's the core of the class, in a way," King says, "how do groups make decisions about things, and then what kinds of institutions do you build?"
The students collaborated on the group projects through Blackboard; Skype, an Internet telephone network; and Web-based video conferences via the desktop camera in King’s office. Their projects culminated in group presentations during Main Campus spring break, when King's D.C. students traveled with him to Qatar's Education City to meet their Doha counterparts.
King's Doha-based teaching assistant, Shervin Malekzadeh, observed the students become one class during the trip.
"To have these flat images suddenly pop out … I felt proud. It wasn't all the American kids sitting on one side of the hall, they're all mixed in," says Malekzadeh, a Ph.D. candidate in the government department. "You have the culmination of all these efforts. Things have come together in this week which, by design or by accident, it's just been great to see."
For King and others involved with the class, the experience has opened up possibilities for continued use of video conference technology across Main Campus and in Doha. For instance, architects modified floor plans for SFS-Qatar's new building to include a video conference facility that would accommodate a class of up to 50 people.
"If we can keep this momentum going and have a dedicated space on Main Campus outfitted with the right technology, and a dedicated space for this kind of thing in Doha, all of which I think is imminently doable," King says, "then I think we can really move into being a genuinely global university."
