PVCC online classes more interactive

It was little more than a week ago that Amy Cox was flat on her back in a hospital.

But with a laptop computer she was able to dial into her surgical technology class where, on the screen, she could see Piedmont Virginia Community College instructor Allen Duff.

And perhaps, ironically, it’s Duff’s class that will prepare Cox to get a job prepping operating rooms and assisting surgeons.

PVCC has pushed to offer more classes online — with zero in 2000 there are more than 70 this year — but Allen’s is the only one that is engaging students in real-time video.

And because the demand for certified surgical technologists is growing nationwide, so is the program’s popularity, Duff said of the class, which also streams over the Internet to two other Virginia community college campuses.

But it may be that convenience is also a key to the success of the program, now in its fifth year online.

Duff has structured the class so that on days when there is a lecture without a lab that follows, students with high-speed Internet access can save on gas and watch the class from home.

He said the class appeals to other colleges in areas such as Roanoke whose medical community needs surgical technologists, but whose colleges do not have the level of student interest — or instructor money in their budgets — to justify a class of their own.

The appeal of the program might also be related to, according to PVCC, a 100 percent job placement rate since 2004 for students who’ve received the one-year technologist certificate.

Federal labor statistics report there will be a 25 percent hike in the number of certified surgical technologists between 2006 and 2016.

As of now, an entry-level technologist can expect to make between $18,000 and $45,000, depending on the size of the hospital, Duff said.

In the Charlottesville area the average is $32,000, he said.

Most hospitals also offer a sign-on bonus that varies between $1,000 and $4,000, he said.

Vickie Wright is in Duff’s program this year and is taking the program remotely from Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown. The classes also stream to students at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.

Wright works up to 25 hours a week at Shenandoah Memorial Hospital and is enrolled full-time in school.

She’s said she’s fine with picking up the material without Allen physically being in the class. Like the rest of the in-house class at PVCC she can ask Duff questions live by typing them into an instant messenger, or by making her voice heard with a miked headset.

“You’re really not on your own,” Wright said.

There’s also an instructor in her class to answer questions and conduct labs where — on days with lectures and labs — students get to apply what they’ve learned that day in class.

“If you’re the kind of person that learns by doing it hands-on, then you’re fine,” Wright said.

And she’ll get even more hands on when she starts her clinical work later this month at a hospital in Winchester. Beyond that, she’ll graduate in August and expects to be able to start work as a technologist at Shenandoah Memorial.

And if history is an indicator there will likely be someone to fill her spot in Duff’s class.

“Each year we have more students apply than we can take,” Duff said.

And it’s that interest that Duff said might end up extending a similar live-stream program elsewhere in the state.

“We would like to space it out,” he said.