Abstract
The Texas Electronic Coalition for Physics was established in 2000 as a means of demonstrating that by linking together, small programs can maintain their vitality in higher education. Using Interactive Television, the Internet, telephones, faxes, and other electronic media, five physics programs scattered across the state of Texas formed a distributed physics department. In addition to jointly offering lecture courses, the group (i) established procedures for operating as a unified entity, (ii) encouraged research regardless of location, (iii) provided a locus for professional camaraderie, (iv) created a distance-based advanced physics laboratory course, and (v) developed assessment tools for measuring success in a distance environment. Through these, the coalition demonstrated that a distributed department can carry out all of the functions associated with a traditional department.
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Acknowledgments
This project was funded by grant P116B011204 from the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement for Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) program. The authors would like to thank Susan Cromwell for the work that she did on developing assessment tools for the project.
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Suson, D.J., Cox, P.H., Hewett, L.D. et al. Distributed Departments: A New Approach to Protecting the Vitality of Small Programs. J Sci Educ Technol 17, 595–609 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-008-9128-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-008-9128-0