Lloyd Shorter, assistant professor of music, had always wanted to find a way to let his students interact with musicians and other artists, not just watching them perform but also listening to them talk and answer questions about their techniques and the creative process.

The problem, Shorter says, is the prohibitively high expense involved in bringing top-caliber artists to campus. He thought videoconferencing might be the answer, but the sound quality never seemed good enough to do a musician justice.

That all changed with the introduction of Internet2 and its availability on the University campus. The technology uses expanded bandwidth capacity to greatly improve the quality of sound transmission.

"You can use traditional video on the web to talk to composers," Shorter says, "but talking about music and actually hearing it are two different things. Internet2 is what makes it possible to transmit high-fidelity sound."

He has used the technology, and a grant from the UD Center for Teaching Effectiveness, to design an interdisciplinary honors course in which five world-renowned artists--choreographers, performers, a composer and an abstract painter--spoke with his students. The guest artists gave informal lectures, demonstrated their techniques and answered student questions, all via the web. Students watched and listened via video screens in an Internet2-wired studio in UD's Pearson Hall, while the artists were broadcast from a similarly equipped studio at New York University. The costs were relatively low, since none had to travel far from their homes in New York City.

Shorter thinks the concept of "visiting" artists who don't physically come to the classroom has enormous potential.

"This was a very exciting opportunity for students," he says. "After talking to these artists personally, they want to see more of their work. And, that was my goal all along."