General Motors MIT distance education welding course (late 1980s)

Tom's first videotaped course, ~30 years prior to 2018. Thirteen-to-fifteen GM employees enrolled as MIT special students. The Detroit-trip discovery that the students were rewinding-and-replaying the tapes, which is what made Tom realize the medium had pedagogical value. Linked forward to Stanford's "tutored video instruction" finding.

About thirty years ago — maybe a little over twenty-five — I actually taught the first distance education course at MIT. It was an experiment where MIT gave credit, and it was distance education to students at General Motors. We videotaped the class and I had thirteen or fifteen students at General Motors, and General Motors was paying tuition for them and they were getting credit as special students at MIT. GM had programs — they could either get a master's degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic or Purdue University because they have programs with those universities. But they wanted a welding course, and my specialty for getting my tenure was welding, and they said would Tom Eagar teach a welding course. Well, I was teaching a welding course, so we videotaped it.