In sessions at the Manhattan-based NYNEX Learning Center, Dr. Thomas Pison, Managing Director and Joseph Milano, P.E., Director of Distance Learning Programs for the World Training Institute, experienced first-hand the promise and perils of video-conferencing for distance learning.

Interacting with a group in Boston, consisting of two NYNEX representatives, our group learned about the limits and possibilities for distance learning. Our group, for the most part enthusiastic, found it fascinating; calamity, it would seem, arises from denying what this technology portends.

The term, "Distance Learning," describes a process whereby people acquire skills and knowledge electronically when student and instructor are separated by time, or space, or both.

An important term associated with both the technology and methodology is "asynchronous" loosely translated as "not at the same time." Thus, distance learning allows tremendous flexibility for training and development because sender and receiver need not be synchronized - in sync - in space or time.

Some organizations are already doing distance learning with varying results. NYNEX, new to cutting-edge marketing initiatives, nonetheless recognizes the market potential in taking an opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of two-way, real-time, video-conferencing- the most dramatic type of distance learning.

Oddly, the sound quality at times was scratchy, and the occasional production glitch reminded us that this medium is still in its formative stage. The integrity of the connections is crucial because the ear can be as unforgiving as the eye.

A muddy picture or scratchy sound destroy the immediacy and virtual presence for which you are investing considerable sums of money. For now, NYNEX and other Baby Bells have an advantage over competing technologies such as the Internet for distance learning, the danger they face is that their competition is closing fast on them.

Like other areas of digital technology, we should expect that the software and hardware needed for distance learning will only become cheaper and easier to use than currently. For now, the flexibility that distance learning offers trainers, in some cases, more than offsets the expenses incurred.

For the travel-jaded trainer who has seen too many too-similar hotel rooms this is a inestimable boon. For example, why travel to Atlanta, Chicago, and Detroit (perhaps in the same week) to deliver a briefing on a new retirement plan when you can stay at home and do your presentation once. Besides, our new world economic order promises to make every destination one grand mall bound by the same chain stores and chain restaurants.

NYNEX strategy must account for the alternatives cable modems, satellites, wireless cell transmission, and the Internet increasingly offer customers desiring video-conferencing. These wide-bandwidth conduits, information superhighways compared with the footpath represented by plain old telephone service, are sought by many who are growing impatient with waiting for fiber optics or ISDN installations.

It is another wake up call that we are all pioneers of sorts; the territory ahead will have much more, not less, of the cameras, lights, and action characterizing television broadcasting.

The value of video conferencing lies in its capacity for show and tell. The image is absorbing and creates a virtual presence when everything works just so. But video conferencing is much more than talking heads; interactive data and image sharing are its real strengths.

Besides providing face to face communication and instant document sharing, distance learning enables groups to use the video camera to show equipment, processes, and viewer reactions.

Current video capture cards, more efficient storage and retrieval media and connections such as digital video disks (DVDs) and Firewire, more processing power in PCs and cable modems with faster bit transfer rates demonstrably improve the quality and speed of videoconferencing.

One of the NYNEX videoconferencing demonstrations showed employees how to follow proper procedures at a construction site. Nothing more than point-and-shoot, show-and-tell, but workers arguably comprehend the points made more effectively than simply reading a manual, a reading often subject to misinterpretation.

This application is low end and seemingly would be most effective in complementing a traditional instructor-led class. However, the interactive component helps assure the trainer, perhaps thousands of miles away, that the Aha! one observes suggests that the worker got the training objective. Not rigorously scientific, but intuitively persuasive.

Currently, most distance learning programming is video-tape stored for use on demand. Advances in storage devices and data compression now allow for up to 2 hours of video storage on one digital video disk (DVD) without degeneration so characteristic of video-cassettes currently used.

Other distance learning programming involves multimedia broadcast production requiring a PC or work station. A computer now performs like the control room in a conventional television broadcasting studio.

This seems a reasonable issue for the prudent. Non-proprietary studies have been done tregarding this issue. However, the market forces establishing distant learning as a standard will prevail despite sufficient data confirming its efficacy, much less its superiority over more traditional approaches.

Any organization venturing into distant learning must determine at what scale it can operate- and what is realistic for that organization. Simple forms of distance learning already prove useful. Distance learning designates learning that can be done from anywhere and at any time. Distance learning permits a trainer to post, e.g., through Lotus Notes or e-mail, a lesson on the net (internet or intranet) at any time, and the trainee can chose to read it and to reply to the trainer at a different time.

Most readers have had some experience with distance learning in its most elementary form. If you took a college course on one end of the campus watching a monitor televising a professor at the other end of the campus who was lecturing to hundreds, perhaps thousands of students, you experienced distant learning. If you ever took a correspondence course to learn a new skill - that was distance learning.

In a group setting, people can read both the lesson and othersŐ remarks at their convenience - asynchronous communication. You can work from an office, from home or, with the use of a notebook computer and modem, even while traveling on other business requiring a face-to-face.

Distant learning production platforms get very expensive, and training people to use the medium efficiently and developing the software content can also get very expensive. The same digital technology that created a new business category, desk-top publishing, now makes possible desk-top broadcasting and receiving.

While many major organizations already have conventional facilities rivaling the quality of commercial television broadcasting, the high cost of studios, cameras, staff and signal transmission, even on closed circuits, has kept the medium from proliferating. Thousands of miles of copper wire already in place are now valued more as pipelines for data to flow through than simple voice transmission. Voice, of course, constitutes one type of data, but fax users, internet surfers and video broadcasters now all share those increasingly busy lines.

Budget restraints and digital technology (e.g., computers, information storage devices, cameras) provide the quantitative and qualitative differences making distance learning the inevitable standard despite some current inadequacies such as glacial-moving customer service departments who install new cable you must have for video-streaming on desktop computer monitors.

Your savings in time, board and travel are considerable and should be used in calculating the return on the investment for any distance learning initiative. For someone giving the same briefing to similar groups so often your monologue drones on in your exhausted dreams, this approach could make the difference between burn-out and refreshed enthusiasm, for both sender and receivers. Depending on whether the emphasis is on the means employed or the benefits to the user, "distance learning" "asynchronous communications," and "flex learning" refer to the same development.

However that same flexibility requires different controls and guidelines analogous to the changes made to work routines by flextime. The requisite technology is similar in the two categories, except for the added burden in the latter case of ascertaining that the "learner at a distance" has completed the required work in a satisfactory manner.

Distance learning, eventually, will change all of our professional and personal lives by making training for new skills available that would otherwise not be possible. For example, if you are a working adult in need of further training but cannot find the time, the flexibility inherent in distance learning will allow you more options by minimizing the logistics demand.

If the training you need is not offered in your geographical area, distance learning will bring it to you. If commuting time or commuting costs to a training site make training not worth the investment, distance learning will eventually provide an economic alternative for more and more people.

In closing, we can look to another useful Chinese insight. Their ideogram for "crisis" consists of two simpler ideograms, one signifies "opportunity," the other signifies "danger." Many of us are inclined to regard the interesting technology transforming the training business as simply dangerous, but we must also embrace that other element, opportunity, because these changes are inevitable and we ignore them at out peril.

Learning and relearning those techniques and skills needed to take advantage of these new opportunities is the skill-set needed for the rest of our careers. Distance learning entails a major commitment in time and money for both organizations, trainers and administrators.

The planning required needs to be done now in order to estimate the most appropriate time for you or your firm to go on-line. Sooner or later though, the technology enabling distance learning will affect us all.

Specific opportunities for clients of the World Training Institute can be found in our training programs. Our platforms use NYNEX technology, satellite downlinks, or video-cards using first generation Pentium chips to provide low-cost desktop video for teleconferencing, training, or security.

World Training Institute is proficient at refining your platform skills and strategies for instructional design in order to transform a potential danger into the opportunity it truly is.