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By Dorren Klausnitzer
January 26, 2003
It doesn't teach that alcohol is bad or that drinking can ruin your life.
Instead, AlcoholEdu gives frank, scientifically backed facts on the effects of alcohol on the body.
And it does it over the Internet.
At some universities, the three-hour Internet course is mandatory for all freshmen, a part of their orientation process.
At Middle Tennessee State University, the only university in Tennessee to use it, the program is used as a disciplinary tool for students caught violating the school's alcohol policy.
However it is used, the program is getting high marks for its straight-talk approach.
"I've had students who said they dreaded it going in, but said they learned some things they didn't realize," said John Dickerson, associate dean of students for judicial affairs at MTSU.
"One student said the course should be offered to all freshmen."
For the past two years, that is exactly what the University of Connecticut has done. Freshmen at Villanova and Princeton universities also are required to take the course.
"That way, there is a higher likelihood of it being talked about by more students and changing the culture of student life," said Austin Jackson, spokesman for Outside the Classroom, the Newton, Mass., company that created the Internet program.
In all, more than 300 colleges and universities use the program. At MTSU, more than 50 students have taken it over the past two years. Students must pay $30 to take the course at MTSU, but each institution negotiates its own fee, ranging from $10-$30, depending on the number of students taking it.
Students take the AlcoholEdu course by connecting to a password-protected site via a high-speed Internet connection. In each of the 20- to 40-minute chapters, students are presented with different interactive exercises, some presented by straight-talking students and medical researchers.
"It's very science-based and nonjudgmental," Jackson said. "It gives the students the information they need to make their own decisions — like, if they have eight drinks in two hours, the chances are they are going to be severely impaired and they will be unable to make good judgments."
Jackson said the company chose that tack to earn the trust of the students they were trying to reach.
"College students are by and large the most cynical people in the world, and they smell it from you a mile away if you are trying to be cool to influence them. So we took a low-key approach," Jackson said.
The students' answers also are confidential. While a course administrator can keep tabs of where the students are in the course and can see the final test grades, the teacher cannot see the students' actual answers.
"That way, students can be completely free and candid," Jackson said.
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