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When National Technological University joined Walden University, becoming the NTU College of Engineering and Applied Science, it brought 20 years of distance-learning innovation and a new model for developing world-class courses.
After meeting with a talent coach and having his makeup done, Dr. S. Hamid Nawab jokes that he feels a little like a movie star. Seeing the engineering professor on the television production set at MGM Studios in Orlando, Fla., it is not surprising that he’s feeling camera-ready and a bit make-believe. After all, outside of the soundproof studios, tourists are posing for photos with Disney characters.
Inside, a completely different kind of performance is being orchestrated. Nawab, a Boston University professor and signal-processing expert, sits on a studio set as technicians fine-tune the sound, adjust lighting, and check camera angles. Instructional designers have spent months ensuring that Nawab’s taping will be a success. Now, it is quiet on the set. The tape rolls as Nawab, composed and relaxed, begins his lecture—the first of 14—for his engineering students at Walden University.
Nawab is just one of dozens of renowned professors from the nation’s most prestigious universities who came to MGM Studios this past summer to record lectures for the engineering and computer master’s degree courses in the NTU College of Engineering and Applied Science. He joined colleagues from Columbia, MIT, Purdue, the University of Illinois–Urbana, and the University of California, Berkeley for two weeks of taping course lectures.
Behind the scenes, an Emmy award-winning video crew captures the lectures digitally—in one take, like live TV—with nearly $4 million worth of computers and editing and production equipment. Technicians, surrounded by monitors, cables, and ever-shifting schedules, prepare the lectures for delivery on CD, DVD, and VCD (video compact disc) and via streaming media.
It’s an instructional model that NTU College faculty and course developers pioneered in the summer of 2004 as National Technological University (NTU). When NTU became a Walden college in January 2005, the same faculty and staff helped apply the model to Walden’s programs in nursing and education. It is just one example in NTU’s history of distance-learning innovations.
National Technological University was founded in 1984 by Dr. Lionel Baldwin, then dean of engineering at Colorado State University. Baldwin saw engineers and technology professionals in his school struggling to stay at the academic forefront of their fields while staying committed to their projects at work and their families at home. He also saw an opportunity to use satellite technology to transmit courses live from universities across the country to corporate sites far from campuses.
“His vision was to connect these schools in a united way for continuing education,” says Beryl Younkin, an academic course coordinator who has been with NTU since its founding. “Baldwin saw the expediency of having students walk down the hallway at work and take an hour off twice a week for their master’s degrees, as opposed to spending hours driving back and forth to a university.”
With the sponsorship of IBM, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, NTU began broadcasting academic courses via satellite from three universities, in Colorado, Georgia, and South Carolina. NTU’s roster of partner universities quickly grew to near 50, including MIT, Purdue, and even the University of Alaska Fairbanks, offering access to hundreds of courses and top professors each term.
“We had more live programming than all the TV networks, with 35,000 hours of broadcast time,” says Younkin. Students and corporate training sites began videotaping courses to watch at home and while traveling for business. Younkin even recalls at least one student who traveled with her own VCR.
When NTU joined Walden, it had more than 2,000 master’s degree alumni, and students at more than 500 companies—from Agilent to Xerox—and, based on fall 2002 enrollment, was listed by U.S. News & World Report as the nation’s largest online graduate school for engineers. But the partner universities it had relied on for coursework were beginning to offer their own distancelearning programs. And the satellite that had been symbolic of NTU’s learning model had been shut down in favor of newer delivery formats like the Internet.
To adapt to changing marketplace conditions, NTU began producing its own courses, no longer relying on other universities but continuing to partner individually with top professors across the country. Joining Walden as a college enabled NTU to further invest in new degree programs, such as its flagship High-Tech M.B.A., and specializations in burgeoning fields like nanotechnology and simulation and game design. The merger also allowed NTU students to tap into Walden’s expansive student services, including the online library, writing center, and federal financial aid.
At first glance, NTU, with degrees including electrical engineering and computer science, may seem like an odd fit for Walden with its programs in education, psychology, and health and human services. But both are leaders in distance learning, and both focus their learning models on helping students acquire knowledge to improve their organizations, industries, and communities.
“Technology promotes social change on the largest scale. It changes the world,” says Walden President and Provost Dr. Paula E. Peinovich. “Electricity, telephones, refrigeration, computers, fiber optics, the Internet, medical technologies—engineers and technology professionals have led the way in solving significant problems that have improved billions of lives.”
The first program to launch with NTU-produced courses was the High-Tech M.B.A. The program is designed specifically for technologists in that it assumes students come with critical reasoning and math skills, and thus focuses on challenges like fostering innovation, off-shoring, managing technology risk, and decreasing time to market. The program is the result of three years of collaboration among engineering and business faculty, working technologists, and leading technology companies.
One company that played a major role in developing the High-Tech M.B.A. was Motorola. “What Motorola realized was that great engineering isn’t good enough anymore. Motorola asked NTU to have segments of the training focus on the communications aspect of managing,” explains Dr. Joe Harder, a consultant and contributing scholar to NTU College. “One of the key ideas was how we are managing distance, managing change, effective communication and working these skills into the curriculum. There need to be theories, but they have to be rooted in real-world applications that demonstrate an understanding of where the industry is going.”
Real-world application is a cornerstone of both Walden’s and the NTU College’s degree programs. Dr. Jim Patton, dean of the NTU College, points to their contributing scholars as a noteworthy example. Rather than rely on a fixed faculty, the NTU College recruits professors and industry thought-leaders who are on the cutting edge of their fields. (For examples, see the “Contributing Scholars” sidebar below.) These contributing scholars help design the courses and provide course lectures.
To complement the contributing scholars, other Walden instructors are brought in from the field to amplify and help explain lectures. “Our instructors offer the perspective of someone who has been in industry for a while, who has relevant experience to share, and is willing to work with students one-on-one to help them understand the material,” Patton says. “Instructors also share the fun stuff, such as their latest discovery.” This learning model—academic-industry collaboration, real-world application, contributing scholars, and Walden instructors—helps students succeed in their programs and in their organizations, says Patton.
In addition to helping students succeed, the learning model is making even veteran professors rethink their course material.
“This was the second NTU course I created for online delivery. Both times I learned a lot about anticipating my students’ needs without the benefit of their presence during the lecture,” says Nawab. “The NTU design team was very helpful in this regard. They encouraged and helped me to create weekly course objectives and self-check quizzes to guide the online students through the maze of material they have to learn.
“Building the online part of my class here made me think about how I teach the course and how I sequence the lecture. I realized that I needed to change it.”
Throughout technology-oriented industries, fastpaced change is a constant. Staying ahead of the curve is part of what has brought leading faculty and motivated working professionals to NTU for more than 20 years.
“We live in a high-tech world where the business landscape and environment are constantly changing,” says High-Tech M.B.A. student Paul Frederick, a project manager at Hewlett-Packard. “To remain productive and competitive, we have to understand how the landscape is changing and try to stay one step ahead of the competition.”
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