System Brings CSUN Classes to Ventura : Education: Newly installed two-way interactive video allows instructors and students to take part in give and take.

Officials at Cal State Northridge on Monday unveiled a technological innovation for their Ventura campus--and they didn’t have to come here to do it.

From a classroom in Northridge, CSUN officials demonstrated an interactive television system that will enable Ventura students to take classes at CSUN without having to make the long drive to the San Fernando Valley.

Although TV has been used in classrooms for years, the new system provides two-way communication: live images and sounds beamed simultaneously to and from both locations.

Using a hand-held remote-control device, an instructor in Northridge can manipulate two cameras in his classroom and two cameras in a Ventura classroom to zoom in on students or information on the blackboard. Overhead microphones transmit voices.

“I will be able to see and talk to students and call them by name,” said Robert M. Huff, a health science instructor. “The neat thing is, the students in each classroom will be able to interact with each other.”

When fall semester classes begin next Monday in Ventura, the new system will be used in at least one psychology class and two health science classes. Without the technology, the psychology class--Counseling and Interviewing--would not have been offered because the instructor is based in Northridge.

With the interactive video, students at the satellite campus could potentially select from any of the courses and instructors at CSUN. College administrators said they initially would offer courses with high interest among Ventura campus students.

“Getting instructors up here has been a problem,” Huff said. “Now we can get classes we couldn’t get before.”

Which is just what the Ventura campus needs, officials said. “This will prove to be a godsend given declining resources and the increasing number of students to be served,” said Joyce Kennedy, director of the Ventura campus, where about 1,300 students are expected to enroll this fall.

Transmitting over telephone lines instead of cable, the system uses a $35,000 digital synthesizer to create high-resolution images on side-by-side monitors in each classroom. The total cost to equip one classroom is about $65,000, officials said.

“Fortunately, CSUN is paying, not us,” Kennedy said. “We don’t have the money.”

CSUN spent about 18 months developing the system, the eighth of its kind among Cal State universities.

CSUN officials contend there is nothing instructors can do in traditional classrooms that they can’t do using two-way video, including taking roll, answering questions, and calling on students to make presentations.

“This is kind of an awesome experience for me,” CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson said over the TV to a Ventura audience during a demonstration of the equipment. “We’ve long been imagining ways to bring education, current events and students to us in a cost-effective way.”

Some students may have a period of adjustment before getting used to the system, officials said. During the demonstration, voices sometimes grew faint when the speaker moved away from the microphone and the images occasionally went out of focus. A general sense of detachment also accompanied the telecast.

“Students probably will feel a little discomfort the first few weeks until they adjust,” Huff said. “They may be a little intimidated.”

Kennedy expects some students to be camera shy and not speak up. “But once the ice is broken, the decibels will go up and there will be more camaraderie,” she said. “I hope our students will be pioneers in helping us solve any problems.”

Huff, who will be teaching his class in Ventura and transmitting it back to Northridge, already sees one problem: blind spots will enable slackers to avoid detection by the TV cameras.

“I may have to reconfigure the room,” he said.