STAR PROFESSORS.

Teachers turn telegenic for satellite classes.

HORACIO MARCHAND IS A STAR, OF sorts. A professor with one of the highest-rated shows in the MBA program at Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, he wows his colleagues with TV lingo. Unlike other professors, he isn't afraid to leave his desk. Marchand keeps his class moving with five-minute segments that feature snappy sound bites, videos. graphics and animated cartoons.

Driving the star system is Mexico's leading business school, which has invested heavily to build a network of classrooms to reach 80,000 students across the Americas. Marchand, a strategic marketing consultant, hosts a course on electronic commerce, just one of many offered via satellite.

He arrives a few minutes early for the class, warms up his student audience with casual banter--something long-distance students miss--then talks with the producer about the exact timing of graphics and videos during the show.

Each half-hour of transmission time requires about 20 hours' preparation. Graphic artists and teaching specialists create support materials for the professor. Camera operators, a producer, a teacher's assistant, plus a tutor for every 50 students, among others, help put together the production. At least one professor at Tec has a makeup artist.

At the start of the class, images of students sitting at desks in other locations appear on the screen. Marchand, like a variety show host, welcomes viewers in Aguascalientes and Chihuahua, Mexico, in Medellin, Colombia, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and beyond.

Class begins. Marchand writes the topic of the day on a piece of paper at his desk. An overhead camera projects the topic on the TV screen. With a sign to the producer, the image changes to one of the Internet pages that will be analyzed during the class. About 10 minutes have passed.

To keep students' attention, the professor gets up from his desk, walking and talking. Two cameras track his movements. When he compares the fears and anxieties of buying products online to the movie The Matrix, his image disappears from the screen and a segment from the movie shows the hero escaping the villains by slipping down a phone line. "That's how quickly your clients can escape you," he says, adding an afterthought. "Do you remember when I said that if you hadn't seen the movie, in this class you would get a chance to see the entire film?"

Not all professors are so show-biz savvy. Econometrics professor Alejandro Fonseca stays at his desk for most of his class. He explains statistical formulas with animated characters. His technique to keep students on their toes is surprise links to classes.

In one electronic ambush, two students in Chihuahua were caught daydreaming. Laughter erupted in the Monterrey classroom when the students admitted that not only hadn't they done their homework problems, they didn't even know what page the class was on. Some things never change.