Thomas Lynch sits at his computer in his third-floor office breaking ground on what he calls the future of higher education: Web-based teaching.

The bearded, bespectacled LSU public administration professor doesn't expect credit, since kudos for innovation usually go to the second or third wave of "innovators."

It's enough just to be first, he says.

"I like to be on the cutting edge. It's my personality."

If done right, Lynch says, Web-based teaching has the ability to reach a massive untapped market of tuition-paying students from around the state, the country and even the world--all for a relatively modest investment up front.

Modest but not free. Though Web-based teaching has "awesome" potential, Lynch says, his three-year experiment with it is menaced by a fight state budget.

Cyber school

Web-based teaching is basically a class without a classroom. In Lynch's graduate-level budgeting and financial management course, the lectures, assignments, exams and discussions all take place online. Students can log into "class" any time of the day or night.

Class actually meets just once, at the start of the semester, so students can be briefed on how to do the course online. Some international students, though, have completed the course without ever setting foot in the United States much less Baton Rouge.

Lynch says the Web-based model is better than the traditional classroom in some ways--getting people to talk, for instance. As every professor knows, in a traditional class setting a certain percentage of students just clam up. Lynch's online "discussion boards" help bring those students out.

"The introvert is much more likely to get involved. He or she can speak as long as they want. It's just a matter of typing. The second reality is you get a much better quality answer. It's not just coming off the top of their heads."

Unlike conventional distance education, which relies on expensive videoconferencing equipment and personnel, Web-based education is possible on a large scale with a relatively modest investment, he says.

Still, Lynch's course, in its third year, is one of the few on campus and just squeaking by due to lack of financial support, though not lack of interest. Any professor who jumps into Web-based teaching faces a huge work load, especially when class sizes get big. Lynch says that for every 25 students he needs a graduate student tutor to monitor discussions and keep them on track.

"If you have a class of 60 students without another tutor you essentially have a double load, and you get paid the same amount. It's not good for the students, it's not good for anybody."

When a traditional class gets too full, the approach is to hire another faculty member at, say, $60,000 a year. A tutor costs $2,000 to $3,000 a year. With Web-based teaching, class size isn't an issue as long as there are enough tutors to help handle the load.

But there aren't.

A tight budget means no money even for tutors. With class sizes exploding, Lynch doesn't have the help he needs for the fall semester to keep the Web-based course going without sacrificing some features and may have to drop it altogether.

That's too bad for LSU, which could be missing out on a serious return for a relatively meager investment, he says.

"LSU could have essentially the same number of students that are on campus right now and could have a student body of 200,000 or 300,000 easy," Lynch says.

It's also a bummer for Louisiana, which for obvious reasons can only stand to gain by making public administration education more accessible across the state.

Early skeptic

Beth Paskoff, LSU dean of library and information sciences, says Web-based education and other forms of distance learning are important to her college since it's the only accredited library science program in the state.

The college has a long history of distance education, starting in the 1930s when it meant sending professors down two-lane blacktop to New Orleans, Shreveport and Alexandria to teach.

"We have a real strong commitment to meeting the education needs of everyone, whether they can come to Baton Rouge or not," Paskoff says.

Besides real-time, two-way "compressed video" courses, the program offers a Web-based course on basic information technology once a year. The traditional face-to-face version is taught twice a year.

Paskoff, before she was dean, was the second faculty member to teach the Web-based version, which she thought sounded like a bad idea.

"I went in very suspicious," she says. "I was sure that this was not going to work. I didn't think it was pedogically sound. So I volunteered to teach the course because I wanted to find out more about it."

What she found out changed her mind. While some students seem to relate better to a traditional classroom setting, the Web-based course works well academically for most, Paskoff says.

She says the discipline of library science is relying more and more on Web-based teaching and other types of distance education since there are only 49 accredited library science graduate programs in the United States.

"This is a way of taking education to the student rather than the student having to come to a particular location."

Cavan McCarthy, a library science professor teaching both versions of the information technology course, says the Web-based and traditional methods are equally effective for highly codified subjects such as information technology.

"I suspect almost all post-graduate education in a few years' time will be distance education of some type, either Web-based or interactive video or something like that," he says.

Lynch agrees. He's pursuing Web-based teaching because he's convinced it works and that it's "the right way to go." He has no expectations of being remembered as a pioneer, but he believes Web-based teaching inevitably will catch on in more and more disciplines.

"I think there's going to be a realization that it makes a lot of sense because the cost of higher education is very expensive," he says. "If you go this approach you can improve the productivity of the education system."

Joe Hutchinson, executive director of LSU's Centers for Excellence and Teaching, says Lynch, Paskoff and other "e-learning" early adapters are doing important work. At the same time, the total costs of conducting Web-based learning aren't always obvious to instructors, he says. Hutchinson points to expensive licensing fees universities have to pay for the educational software that supports Web-based teaching.

"The cost of a couple of teaching assistants is relatively small, but those are not the only costs," he says. "Funding is is not a matter of willingness, it's a matter of means."

STEVE CLARK covers health care, higher education, environment and transportation. Reach him at s clark@businessreport.com.

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