Another story in the local rag about education, another rant from me. You know the drill:

Sounds like you've been reading the promotional material. 

In reality, the "virtual" student experience at SCU is limited to a third-party product called Blackboard. It's basically a 1980s-style bulletin board system. Google "Blackboard sucks" for first-hand testimony.

It has an add-on component that does indeed allow you to participate in online "lectures". In these the low-paid tenuously-employed lecturer, usually in the discomfort of their own home, shouts into the void, sounding at the receiving end as though connected via two tin cans joined with string. They can also run a slide show. No two participants can have their microphone active simultaneously, as the software seizes up at this unreasonable level of demand, so staff and students eventually settle on some convention equivalent to saying "over" at the end of each contribution to the awkward exchange, as if it were CB radio.

The other mode of instruction at SCU is called "converged delivery". SCU has three main campuses, but they don't need more than one lecturer per subject because they broadcast the lecture to the other two campuses where, for the first couple of weeks at least, a few students watch them on-screen. The lecturer must control the entire production themselves. There is a stationary camera mounted to a wall or ceiling, so they stand rooted to the spot at a control panel barking into a microphone as though they're working the drive-thru window at McDonalds. Plus there's the slide show.