Distance learning through Internet technology is fast becoming a standard in higher education. Virtual universities–as extensions of existing, real institution, as well as those that exist only in cyberspace (i.e., with no physical campus)–are growing in number every day. It is well known by now that those colleges that are not keeping abreast with these changes are going to be "left in the dust."

The Ohio University music course, "Exploring Musical Styles," is a music history course for nonmusic majors. The course provides "tier" credit for the fulfillment of a humanities requirement for the Associate and Baccalaureate degrees.

As a branch campus, Ohio University-Zanesville was issued a directive this past year: Work towards the goal of reducing 'seat time' on campus by using technology to reach students in their homes. In other words, let new distance learning technologies provide the student with the proper classes that can be taken and attended through personal computers and the Internet.

Last year's TDML conference gave me the inspiration and motivation to apply for the grant that accompanied this directive. Our music history course was the perfect type of class to use for this situation. The Kamien text, Music: An Appreciation, was already being used for the course, and McGraw-Hill's Intermuse naturally fits in with the text. Since I use a Macintosh computer, Adobe Pagemill and Apple's Quicktime were logical choices for website development.

Therefore, this presentation will focus on the building of that site utilizing these four resources listed above. It will also show how the course functions in its interaction with the student and through testing using the IRC chat system and VLT's Cyberexam, used by Ohio University.

The Roger Kamien textbook, Music: An Appreciation, is an ideal source for an Internet music course. The approach to the material is simple and straightforward. Every chapter is a concise summary of important composers, concepts and historical information. The glossary, appendices and Listening Outlines provide ample supportive information. The Study Guide and Student Workbook, prepared by Raoul Camus, give excellent exercises, projects, and self-tests to assist the student in a complete comprehension of the material. The 3-CD set of music examples is indispensable.

The Reindeer/McGraw Hill CD-ROM product that was previewed in a Beta format during last year's TDML conference was finally released this past August. It has some peculiar technical quirks, but it is a welcomed accompaniment to the Kamien music literature text. Intermuse prepares the student for the weekly online discussions as well as the online exams with lectures, self-tests, and a good cross-section of music examples. The Lectures for each stylistic period provide a brief summary of information with music from that period in the background. The student must have the 3-CD audio set of music examples that is available from McGraw Hill, and accompanies the Kamien text to utilize the full features of Intermuse. The Listening Guide contains the Listening Outlines from the Kamien, and allows a deeper investigation of each period with the ability to play audio CDs from the Kamien collection and highlight important structural ideas such as themes, instrumentation, and form. The Studio area of Intermuse gives the teacher and/or student the opportunity to create their own "movie" of a particular musical work. The movie can be used to demonstrate concepts or create a student project.

Pagemill is an easy and powerful program to use for the creation of web pages. In its 3.0 version, it now incorporates Sitemill features without having to work from a separate program. Once you have made your decisions about site architecture, colors, designs, objects and layout of text and these other elements, the creation of the site moves along quickly. Updating and uploading changes to your site, once it is on the Internet and functioning, requires either the use of an FTP program (e.g., Fetch or WS_FTP) to retrieve your pages for updating, or having a copy of those pages on your computer.

Quicktime in combination with sound editing software (e.g., Macromedia's Soundedit 16) and Pagemill allows for relatively easy creation of soundfiles that can be inserted as objects in your site's pages. Pagemill provides instructions for two different procedures on its website. I prefer to use Soundedit 16 so that I can record from CDs and modify music examples (e.g., creating loops). Once you have edited the file as you want it, save it as a Quicktime movie and go to your page and insert it as an object according to Pagemill's instructions. It is important to remember that soundfiles consume a great deal of memory; compression is the key to managing their size. A large soundfile that has to download with a page using a modem connection will take forever.

When you have the site functioning on the Internet, the soundfile will start automatically when someone reaches that page only if you have "autoplay" turned on. If you ignore this and the other two features (loop and hiding the QT controls), the sound can be controlled by the site visitor. If you have two or more soundfiles on the same page, the controls will have to be visible and autoplay turned off, so that the visitor will have control over the music.

You can visit the site at http://ouz.zanesville.ohiou.edu. Click on the online courses link and click on the music link.

Follow the directions given in the previous paragraph and click on the art history link. Once you have built one website with Pagemill, building the second site is even easier than the first. You can transfer many of the features from the first site to the new one if you plan wisely. Compare, for instance, the music and art history sites.