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Volume

38

Issue

3

Abstract

Pennsylvania Extension educators adopted an innovative distance education workshop approach based upon satellite downlinks to Farm Service Agency borrowers for up to 26 locations in Northeast states (1995-99). After 2 years of training experience, the use of satellite downlinks was found to be associated with technical difficulties, rigid scheduling, and higher costs than permitted in a self-funded training program. Subsequently, satellite downlinks were eliminated in favor of pre-taping instructor presentations. However, a continuing problem with multi-year use of pre-taped videos is that they tend to soon become dated. For future distance education workshops, educator use of the Internet may soon provide a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to both satellite uplinks and pre-taped videos. Until that technology becomes widely available and familiar to Extension staff and their clientele, however, pre-taped videos will likely remain a mainstay.

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