University Business - April 2007 - (Page 55)

are being seen.” Digital document cameras also capture and help broadcast images that need to be viewed at very close range. Thanks to more aﬀordable hardware and chip technology, the cost of outﬁtting a classroom has dropped from a quarter of a million dollars to $50,000 today. “Some people cringe when they hear that, but we are looking at a signiﬁcant reduction,” he observes. Today WSU has 45 classrooms equipped for video conferencing across its four campuses. The video conferencing system originates 14,000 hours of academic programming per year and supports 8,000 enrolled students. St. Louis University, a private institution in Missouri, uses video conferencing for diﬀerent academic purposes. Its Adventures in Medicine and Science Program gives middle- and high-school students access to human anatomy procedures that they would not be able to experience in traditional K-12 curricula. Young biology students actually get an internal tour of the human body thanks to university instructors and a Polycom setup housed in the School of Medicine, explains Ray Vollmer, started locally as part of the city’s Cooperating School Districts program, says Vollmer. The state wanted to help tutor rural students. But the program was discovered by schools in other states and now services schools far and wide, says Vollmer. A team at Lehigh University (Pa.) uses a mix of applications to serve adult distance ed students. An Elluminate web conferencing system is used to connect part-time business school students who cannot come to campus, says Peggy Kane, senior instructional technology consultant. “They participate from a corporate site, or from home,” she says. The lectures are broadcast from several classrooms that have been outﬁtted for this purpose. Some material is captured and compressed with Accordant’s rich media system. Lectures and other materials are made available to students on demand through the Blackboard learning management system. “Typically the professors determine the mechanism for interacting with the students,” she explains. The communication can be done from many platforms—telephone, discussion board, web conferencing, and so on. COLLABORATION “COLLABORATION” HAS REPLACED “convergence” as the buzzword in AV technology. Any higher ed executive doing due diligence on a web conferencing system will no doubt hear the word bandied about. Collaboration is really teamwork at all levels. It can refer to the promise of effortless virtual connectivity—a seamless presentation that might include video, a slide show, photos, and spreadsheets. But it also refers to the ability of many users to do complex tasks at the same time, such as business students ﬁlling in data on a common spreadsheet and running analyses. Expect more collaborative applications to be introduced for the education sector during the coming months. In the effort to make their systems more user-friendly, vendors in the web conferencing and video conferencing arena are adding features like instant messaging and video-ondemand services. The web conferencing company Elluminate, for example, has just added a “breakout room” application called vRoom, which will allow web conferencing users to form subgroups of ﬁve members or so, in order to have access to applications with low bandwidth. The company is promoting the new product for use among small groups of students who can work on problems or engage in disparate tasks while the instructor “moves from room to room” to monitor progress and offer guidance. Other uses include one-onone meetings, virtual ofﬁce hours, and tutoring. Adobe has added a Connect Professional application that brings small groups together for what it calls “eCoaching.” The new feature is marketed to educators along with the company’s web conferencing products. Students and instructors can share a host of programs through the system, including games and simulations. The application also integrates with Sakai, an open-source learning management system. “Students are dictating to schools how they want to learn.” program coordinator. The eﬀort was initially based solely on an ISDN telecom structure, but now more internet protocol is part of the mix. A teacher who wants the class to participate can visit a determined website and connect to the program. Multiple classes can also watch the same program, but connectivity requires a telecom bridge between locations. These are synchronous broadcasts, which means that the students view dissection procedures and tissue specimens in real time. (Asynchronous broadcasts are played back after they’re recorded.) Each of the human anatomy tutorials is conducted in 50- to 60-minute sessions for which each class pays $150. Adventures in Medicine and Science —Mishez Avari, AT&T Beyond the Classroom Innovation is not conﬁned to the lecture hall, though. Web conferencing and video conferencing systems are used more and more by administrators. In fact, Dover has seen usage at WSU shift from almost purely academic to more administrative. Currently, distance education accounts for only 50 percent of the use. HR interviews, workgroup meetings and other administrative functions account for the other online conferences. Oftentimes, though, the inspiration for web conferencing applications has been sparked in the academic department. This is what happened at Lamar University, part of the Texas state university system. In September 2005, the staﬀ had to scramble universitybusiness.com April 2007 | 55 http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - April 2007

Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Admissions
Independent Outlook
On The Hill
Future Shock
Spellings Lessons
Identity Mangaement
Getting A Bigger Picture
Facility Directors Speak Out
Internet Technology
Working the Web
What's New
Calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business - April 2007