How corporate America trains by telecommunications.

The use of telecommunications for education and training is not a new idea. Alexander Graham Bell in his original patent for the telephone listed educational lectures as one of the primary uses for his new invention. PBS and programs like "Sesame Street" are a testament to the power of television to teach via communications.

Now our country faces a massive task of retraining our workforce to compete in a new world economy. Estimates by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) say that 55 million Americans, currently employed, need to be retrained.

Converging on this need for increased corporate training is a whole new set telecomm technology applications and innovative instructional techniques called "distance learning." This new approach to training and education goes beyond instructional television and sunrise semester to utilize two-way interactive video communications and multimedia to teach from a distance.

What makes this new approach to training so attractive are the economies that have been introduced into videocommunications by compression and new low-cost response terminals that allow more interaction between instructor and student than can be accomplished in a classroom.

Hewlett-Packard's Distance Learning System delivers training at one-half the cost of traditional classes, the firm figures.

"Traditional training methods imply a logjam of manufacturing and logistical delay," according to Tom Wilkins, distance learning systems manager for HP. "Between completion of course materials and delivery, a critical gap develops, sometimes as long as six months. The longer it lasts, the more likely it is that they will be outdated before they can be delivered to the students."

The interactive classes developed for HP's Information Technology are designed to close that gap and bring the interactive intimacy of classroom training to the field worldwide.

HP's Information Technology Education Network (ITE-Net) is a pacesetter. In an industry-wide race to master this powerful medium, Wilkins has developed a network that can leverage limited expertise and greatly reduce the time to retrain a large, geographically diverse population.

The system uses response terminals. At the touch of a button, students from over 100 classrooms worldwide are in direct contact with their teleclass instructor. The system provides instantaneous two-way voice communications between instructors and students. Instructors also receive immediate feedback from compiled student responses to numeric or multiple choice questions through a student response keypad system.

Spacious field classrooms can accommodate 1,200 students in comfortable learning environments. Most major metropolitan areas have an HP office capability of receiving interactive instruction. A secure communication channel ensures privacy for marketing, support management, engineering, and customer training. The experienced ITE-Net staff can advise instructors on all aspects of teleclass delivery--from initial course development to final production. Instructors are free to teach, with all aspects of production handled by the ITE-Net crew who view the class through a one-way mirror. Professional graphics are produced by talented technical illustrators and graphic artists.

The ITE-Net Uplink facility, located in Cupertino, Calif., is a state-of-the-art system. For the instructor it features a fully integrated system which can be accessed by touching the screen of a video display. This consistent interface with the system enables instructors to easily use and control a vast array of educational tools which include stored graphics, remote cameras, videotape rollins and drawing tablets.

The instructor is positioned at a command center console. Through the console, the instructor is positioned at a command center console. Through the console, the instructor can link to any of the remote classrooms and can involve students at remote locations, either with voice of data feedback systems. The console lets the instructor respond to a question asked a continent away, immediately display the slide that illustrates the issue, zoom in on a precise portion of that slide and annotate it, and prove the point with an on-line example.

Seven TV cameras are used to display the activities occurring in the classroom as they happen.

Students have equal access to the system, and it gives them the sense of personal involvement critical to successful learning.

The student response system places students at each reception site in immediate person-to-person communication with the instructor and fellow students through linked microphones embedded in their desks. They can electronically raise their hands, signaling a desire to be heard, ask questions and enter into discussions.

Another feature, a data collection ability, lets the instructor ask questions of groups of students and display tallied results onscreen. During its first two weeks on the air in 1987, ITE-Net broadcast training to 20 U.S. sites and a simultaneous taped class in Bristol, England, for 300 commercial support engineers.

Wilkins observes that traditional training classes would have taken 18 months to achieve the same results.