ECU wins adult education award

East Carolina University has received a statewide award for its NILEC video network.

NILEC stands for Network for Interactive Learning of Eastern North Carolina. ECU uses the network for teaching and for health care consulting.
The North Carolina Adult Education Association (NCAEA), this month, awarded the ECU network the “Creative and Innovative Program Award” for 1993, according to Dr. Diana Hinshaw of ECU.

The award recognizes ECU’s “creative delivery of distance learning and telemedicine services to rural eastern North Carolina.” NILEC uses interactive television technology to deliver courses, meetings and instructional conferences and seminars to hospital and community college sites. The sites currently in use are in Ahoskie and Jacksonville.

Hinshaw said the system is important because it links the campus and communities in ways that eliminates the barriers of time, distance, weather and geography. For example, nurses in the Ahoskie area and teachers in the Jacksonville do not have to drive long distances to take nursing courses. Health care providers have found the system especially useful in obtaining second opinions from specialists without the transportation of doctors or patients.

“It represents a partnership between the medical and academic campuses,” said Hinshaw.

She called the NCAEA award “an affirmation of ECU’s efforts to bring educational and medical resources to the communities of rural eastern North Carolina.” Accepting the award for ECU were: Hinshaw, director of the ECU Division of Continuing Education and Summer School; Dr. Ken Marks, director of Joyner Library; and David Balch, director of Health Sciences Communications.

The NCAEA began in 1953. The organization and its members work to increase public awareness of adult education services and issues.