of lectures by regular faculty (via video conferencing) coupled with the use of the WWW by students for communication and interactive learning (Kapyla & Wahlstrom, 2000). The courses provided by the Center include a 15-credit 'virtual' course in educational technology aimed at teachers and provided through 15 local centers throughout Finland. Some 70 hours of lectures are provided through multi-point video conferencing and a similar number of hours of face-to-face tutorial support at local centers. The program also involves the use of an interactive facility based on the World Wide Web. Using specially developed Web-based software; students develop their projects online, generating their own material and drawing down resources from the Web. In this way, each student develops a personal portfolio of Web-based materials. Communication between students and their tutors and between groups of students is also provided through the medium of the WWW. Students can access the Web either from home or from their local centers.

Satellite television also is pedagogically close to the traditional lecture, at least as commonly practiced. Satellite-based higher education is well established in the US where a number of universities use this technology to reach students off-campus. The National Technological University (NTU) in Fort Collins, Colorado, is an interesting example of a successful approach to using satellite television in university degree programs. NTU is a private, non-profit institution founded in 1984, which, with the cooperation with 46 other universities, presents a wide range of graduate and professional courses via satellite. Each of the universities has an uplink to the satellite transponder through which lectures are presented directly from the appropriate campus. The programs focus on engineering and related disciplines (NTU, 1999) include short courses, workshops, research seminars, undergraduate bridging courses, and master degrees.