Remember those days at home, watching television and seeing programs set in a classroom? Instrucotrs would be lecturing on material, while students would be in class and on screen, part of the program. Those may have appeared to be random, but they were not. Distance learning programs are part of a new way of teaching, a new way of learning.

Distance learning is not new to De Anza College by any means; the days of videocassettes brought course content into the homes of students.

Now, with the advancement of the digital age, many of those course materials have been digitized and are offered via the main Web system used by De Anza for online courses called Catalyst.

Catalyst is the main operating system for distance learning classes. After students find their way around, the operations needed for completing class work becomes second nature. Technical support is available for questions regarding the program if students encounter problems.

The Distance Learning Center is located inside the library in LC 107.

Courses on Catalyst are not solely distance learning; many traditional De Anza courses that offer video components for use Catalyst, as well as classes that are hybrids – classes that meet on campus selected days and online for the others. Distance Learning Instructional Designer April Qian says that online classes stay up when campus-wide problems arise, as was the case with the storm that caused power outages on campus Oct. 13. Classrooms on campus went dark for a few hours, but that was not the case with Catalyst.

As with any program at De Anza, the Distance Learning program has been hit with budget cuts.

However, they are average when compared to other departments, says Qian.

“One of the main issues facing the program is a shortage of staff,” she said. For fall quarter, Qian said there were 4,000 students enrolled in Distance Learning classes at De Anza.

When is a distance learning class suitable? The answer to that question can be found on the FAQ page of the distance learning portion of De Anza Web site: http://www.deanza.edu/distance/.

Some reasons might be busy schedules, a conflict in needed classes, or even just being more of an independent learner, among others, for why people decide to take distance learning classes.