Remote course and degree delivery in China

The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) at Portland State University (PSU) has begun to deliver ECE courses to students in Shanghai, China at the International Institute for Information, Science, & Technology (IIIST) in an innovative experiment in international collaborative education. The courses consist of current lectures recorded in PSU classrooms, delivered with full support materials by both CD-ROM and Internet streaming, to students at the IIIST in Shanghai. The students are fully admitted to PSU, and will graduate with PSU degrees. All courses are in English, and the IIIST provides support in English as a second language, and by providing most of the lower-division program. Classroom assistance with the courses is provided in the Shanghai classroom by local faculty drawn from Fudan and JiaoTong Universities. Graduate programs are due to begin in fall 2002. The paper provides full details of the program's organization, and industrial support. One outcome of the program is that "local" Portland engineering students will have the opportunity to visit China for summer courses and travel, in conjunction with the IIIST. Another is that essentially all of PSU's ECE Department's courses are available on-line (or on CD) to other potential collaborators worldwide.