Today Heather Hawkins will be getting a taste of what education might be like in the future. She and other students across the nation will participate in a conference call that is part of a course enabling them to learn from experts all over the world without leaving their own university.

Rustum Roy, Penn State Evan Pugh professor of the solid state, has created a nationwide classroom using video and audio technology. Students from Penn State and six other universities who are all taking Roy's class will watch two videotaped lectures each week and will have live discussion sessions through a conference call every Thursday afternoon.

"The reason we are doing it is to get the best teachers in the world to do the teaching," Roy said.

The class, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is called "Ceramic Materials Synthesis: Theory and Case Studies" and is being offered to upper-level and graduate students at Penn State, Clemson University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, University of Delaware and Stevens Institute of Technology, said Robert Berrettini, producer of the class and research associate at the Materials Research Laboratory.

Students will learn about the making of new ceramic materials and how ceramics are put together, Berrettini said.

The class will consist of lectures on theory and case studies. Case-study lecturers include experts from Penn State, the University of Newcastle, the Indian Institute of Science, AT&T Bell Labs and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. The lectures were recorded at Penn State and the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Hawkins (graduate-materials) said she is looking forward to being taught by Roy, whom she called one of the most prominent scientists in the field.

If students have questions about the lectures, they can fax or E-mail them to Roy any time during the week and Roy will answer them during the live discussion session, Berrettini said. About 25 Penn State students watched the first video lecture Tuesday. Today they will watch another recorded lecture, followed by their first conference-call discussion session.

Each university has a site professor responsible for grading the students. But the faculty as well as the students will learn from the class, Berrettini said. One of the purposes of the class is to educate faculties at universities where the resources for such a course are not available, he said.

Dennis Nagle, assistant professor of material science at Johns Hopkins University, said he is looking forward to the class.

"I'll learn as much as the students -- maybe more," he said. "It is a unique opportunity for a small department like ours to learn from the best."

Suzanne Rohde, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Nebraska, said because her university has no ceramics department, the class will be very useful for her students.

Berrettini said one of the advantages of teaching a class by video and live audio is its cost-effectiveness. Although a satellite may be ideal, it is much more expensive, he said.

One of the problems the videotape and live audio class faces is the different schedules of the participating universities. Nagle said Johns Hopkins University does not start classes until Jan. 30, so his students will be two weeks behind the rest of the class. He will have to cram a lot of information into the first two weeks in order to catch up, he said.

Michael Grutzeck, associate professor of materials, said two courses will be produced with the grant money from the National Science Foundation. The second one is on electronic materials and is in production now. It may be taught next semester, he said.

Berrettini said this course may only be the beginning of a new type of long distance education.

"It could be a whole new version of distance education -- a cost-effective one," he said.