Teaching a Forage Crops Course to Extension Agents via Distance Education

An opportunity arose at Louisiana State University (LSU) to teach a forage ecology and management course over distance education to 30 Extension agricultural field agents. Many of these agents had not taken a college-level course in several years. All of the agents performed well in the course. While the distance education technology worked reasonably well in this course, the majority of the agents indicated that they would still rather take courses in a conventional classroom setting. Results of this teaching experience indicate that distance education technologies provide unique opportunities but that maintaining direct student-instructor interaction can be a challenge