When Will Currey took a teaching methods course in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources last year, he participated in classroom discussions and small-group projects, asked and answered questions during lectures and made oral presentations to his fellow students.

The difference from most other University classes is that Currey was alone in a classroom in southern Delaware, some 80 miles from the rest of the class on the Newark campus, for all those activities. His full participation in the class was made possible by a two-way television system set up in a pair of specially equipped classrooms--one at the agriculture college's Research and Education Center in Georgetown, Del., and the other in Townsend Hall in Newark.

"I was teaching until 3:15 each day, and it wouldn't have been possible for me to drive all the way to Newark for class and drive all the way back home each evening," says Currey, who teaches agriculture science at Sussex Central High School in Georgetown.

Currey, with a bachelor's degree in animal science and a few years' work experience, including some time as a ranchhand-cowboy in Kansas, needed the course to earn his state teaching certification and keep his job. At the same time, not enough prospective students for the course lived in southern Delaware to hold a separate class there.

The solution came through the interactive television (ITV) system that enables classes to meet simultaneously in two locations and interact as if they were physically in the same room. Most such classes have a handful of students in the remote location, but in Currey's case, he was the only participant in Georgetown that semester.

"I was leery at first about taking a course this way, but it worked out very well," he says. "It was a practical and efficient way to do it, and I really felt like part of the class."

"It's great technology to use," says Richard Bacon, instructor in food and resource economics, who co-taught Currey's class with Patricia Barber, associate professor of food and resource economics. "It's a live feed, so there's no lag time, and the picture is crisp. It's a very interactive class, and we've had no problems."

Barber agrees, noting that she and Bacon require students to present a sample classroom lesson during the course, to be critiqued by their professors and peers, and that the experience of doing so via television always goes smoothly.

"There's so much interaction with both groups of students that you really almost forget that some of them aren't physically there in the classroom with you," she says. "The students are very engaged in the class."

A technician in Georgetown helps with the mechanics of the broadcast, although students soon learn "to be their own engineers," Bacon says. Currey exchanged some materials with the rest of the class by mail, and he also had the use of a fax machine to turn in work he completed during class time. Microphones in the Newark classroom could be turned on and off individually, so that when the class broke into small groups, Currey could be part of one group's discussions without the distraction of hearing all the others.

"In an ITV classroom, everything is right at your fingertips," Barber says. "The University has accommodated our needs very well."

It's not just the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources that uses ITV classrooms. The College of Marine Studies, for example, has been using the technology since 1993 to link students on its Lewes and Newark campuses, as well as for administrative, faculty and outreach staff meetings.

And, anyone on campus can make use of the same videoconference capabilities for such activities as meetings, guest lecturers and research collaboration, according to Kathleen Troutman, associate director of University Media Services.

Last summer, the University upgraded its interactive video system, adding updated videoconferencing technology to the links between the Newark campus and southern Delaware, Troutman says. The enhanced system includes new microphones for improved audio quality, the ability to transmit higher-resolution graphics and a provision allowing multiple sites to be included in the same videoconference.

In addition, the system now has a backup in case of network difficulties and uses an international standard, "which means the colleges can videoconference virtually anywhere in the world, in addition to up and down the state between our campuses," Troutman says.