Work in progress - distance learning: the path to lifelong education

At the University of Virginia, the School of Engineering and Applied Science established a formal distance-learning program in 1983. Both of us have been teaching in this program for nearly 20 years. Between us we have taught five distinct types of courses, most through multiple iterations. In this paper, we describe our uses of information technology to enhance the learning environment for our students including solids modeling, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and statistics and data visualization. We then reflect on the distance learning experience from both the professor's and student perspectives.