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Session # 2477

Digital Video and Internet as an Effective Supplement for an Innovative Course.

T. K. Ghosh, M. A. Prelas, S. K. Loyalka and D. S. Viswanath*

Nuclear Engineering Program University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO 65211 *Emeritus Professor, Chemical Engineering

Abstract

This paper describes innovations in teaching a new course developed in the area of Terrorism and Counter Terrorism (TACT) during the Fall 2000 semester. The course was interdisciplinary and it covered political as well as scientific and technological topics. In addition external speakers from industry and government also lectured in this course. Students in the course ranged from journalism, science, medicine and engineering.

To assists students from different backgrounds, each lecture was digitally recorded. The video and audio was then transformed into a MPEG file and burned onto a CD. A separate audio file was then produced and was downloaded to the course web page. The audio file was accessible through the course web page. Students were allowed to check out the CDs and view the lectures.

Our experience has shown that students were better able to comprehend a new topic by not only attending the lectures, but also by having access to the audio files through their home computers. Some students preferred viewing the video. We will discuss our experiences with this method of presenting a multidisciplinary course to a multidisciplinary student body.

1. Introduction

The recent events such as bombing of USS Cole, Oklahoma City bombing, Tokyo Subway Sarin attack have created a need to educate students in area of terrorism and counter terrorism. Terrorism has been a familiar tool of political conflict, and it has assumed greater importance during the past twenty years. Political scientists in various forms have treated this subject, but the scientific and technological aspects of different forms of terrorism have not been treated in a single place. Terrorism and Counter Terrorism are covered in several disciplines, such as public administrations, public policy, political science, history, science and technology. Most of the courses on this subject are taught as a part of Political Science, Public policy and Law curriculum, and some courses are taught by different Defense establishments for in-house training. It is important for persons who propose counter measures to understand the basics of different types of terrorism such as for instance the nature of chemical agents, their properties such as toxicity, etc. in order to build defense systems. There are hundreds of books, and a host of journals dealing with this subject; however, the scientific and technological aspects of TACT are loosely and thinly spread in some journal articles as for example in the JAMA in1997 on biological warfare. A quick

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education

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Ghosh, T., & Loyalka, S., & Prelas, M., & Viswanath, D. (2001, June), Digital Video And Internet As An Effective Supplement For An Innovative Course Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9138