Interactive Television Courses (ITV)

Interactive Television (ITV) classes are classes where the instructor teaches from one place but the students may be in up to three other places.  The instructor and students can see and talk to each other as if they are in the same room together.  They can do this through a two-way broadcast, providing live, interactive communication among the instructor and students regardless of location.  Each site has a specially equipped distance learning (DL) classroom that can accommodate this type of broadcast.

Jefferson Community College offers college courses to qualified high school students through the Interactive Television (ITV) program and occasionally uses the same technology to offer courses to extension sites as well as receive courses from partner colleges. 

For some class sessions the instructor may travel to another site to teach the class from that location. These courses have fixed meeting times and places and follow the JCC Academic Calendar.

How do ITV classes work?

The classroom in which the instructor is located is the host site. The classrooms where a host site connects are called remote or receiving sites. Each classroom contains equipment which may be similar to the following:

• A document camera to display visual material and serve as an “electronic chalkboard”
• A camera in the back of the room, focused on the instructor
• A camera in the front of the room, focused on the students
• Ceiling or desktop microphones to transmit audio
• Monitors or a projector in the front of the room for student viewing of remote sites and any material displayed by means of the document camera or other video input
• A control system for the instructor to choose what is being viewed by the remote sites

Courses typically offered through this program include Personal Finance, Introduction to American Government, State and Local Government, Introduction to Psychology, Introduction to Sociology, American History to 1877, American History 1877 to Present, Precalculus, Calculus 1 and Macro-Economics.

The high schools currently participating in this program are Alexandria Central School, Beaver River Central School, Belleville Henderson Central School, Copenhagen Central School, General Brown Central School, LaFargeville Central School, Lowville Academy and Central School, Lyme Central, Sackets Harbor Central, South Lewis Central, and Thousand Islands Central.

Interested in taking an ITV course?

High school students and parents should contact their school’s guidance office to learn more about Jefferson’s High School ITV program.