Harvard College will launch its first venture in distance learning tomorrow with Harvard at Home, an online learning website that will offer alumni users a chance to explore academic topics from ancient Greek poetry to the physics of fluids.

The site, which was designed for use by alumni only, will not offer full-length courses but rather academic vignettes that will include video and audio clips of lectures, speeches, and interviews with faculty members. Users will also be provided access to supplementary materials such as texts and historical data.

"[Harvard at Home] is meant to give alumni a tasting of learning at Harvard," said Frank M. Steen, director of Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS). "It will be like a course website, but something an alumnus could look at in a few hours."

Get With the Program

Harvard at Home will make its debut with three vignettes. The headliner will be a segment called "Rediscovering Homer: Poetry and Performance," an abridged version of a two-day alumni seminar that was given last year by Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature Gregory Nagy.

The site's debut will also include two segments that will center around Science Center lectures. One, called "Making Waves: Quantum Billiards to Concert Acoustics," was inspired by a public lecture presented by Professor of Chemistry and Physics Eric J. Heller.

The other is called "The Fluid World: flows, films and foams," and is an introduction to fluid dynamics taught by Howard A. Stone, a professor from the Division of Engineering & Applied Sciences.

Steen said he hopes a segment by Nancy M. Cline on "Virtual Continuity: What will be expected of libraries in the next millennium?" will also be ready by Thursday, but that if not, it will be added to the site soon afterwards.