Hello, I'm Tom Tiller, Vice President of Alumni Relations.

As President Steger announced, VTalumnNET is an online program to establish a virtual gateway to lifelong learning for you, our Alumni. Virginia Tech is a leading university in the area of instructional technology, and now our alumni can benefit from some of the advancements being made in this area. In partnership with the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning we are able of offer you VTalumnNET, the online educational program designed to provide you with lifelong learning opportunities that will enhance your personal and professional development.

To help us develop the most useful online content for you, we surveyed 37,000 alumni who had registered their email addresses with the Alumni Office. The results provided us with your interest level regarding online instruction, your background and general demographic information, what types of courses you were interested in taking online and how to design these courses for online delivery. I would like to share some of those specific results with you. Eighty percent of all alumni who responded to the survey indicated that they were either "interested" or "very interested" in taking an online course. The top six areas of interest were business management, finance, gardening/landscaping, computer basics, Marketing and Civil War studies. Alumni prefer to work at their own pace with limited interaction with faculty and students when taking online instruction. Many Prefer mini-courses and 90 minute short courses.

In response to your specific needs we will provide you with several initial knowledge units and courses that are available over the Web. These offerings will be expanded in the coming months and beyond.

Please visit the Learning Community section of the VTalumnNET website. This area of the website is your window to guide our development. You can fund a program or course and submit your suggestions, comments and needs through our online forms. This information is used to target programming needs and to continually improve your educational experience. This is a marvelous opportunity to stay connected with Virginia Tech and continue to enjoy some of our professors through the convenience of the Internet." ...