When Charles Stuart Uni needed to simultaneously deliver courses to eight different campuses around Australia, it turned to videoconferencing. What challenges, and rewards, did it face along the way?
Maintaining close ties between branch offices in different cities usually demands lots of flying back and forth. But for rural NSW institution Charles Sturt University (CSU), even flying wasn't going to let lecturers simultaneously deliver courses to students at campuses in Albury, Wagga Wagga, Bathurst, Dubbo, Canberra, Broken Hill, Goulburn, and Sydney.
For years, the university's solution has been to use videoconferencing over its asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) microwave wide-area network. PictureTel in-room videoconferencing units were initially installed at every campus to let administrative meetings include staff at far-flung campuses. Lecturers also recently began using the systems to deliver courses to students at remote campuses such as Dubbo, where there are few academic staff and many courses were delivered entirely on paper.
Since CSU runs videoconferencing over its internal network, the university's cost has been minimal and the technology's popularity strong: videoconferencing rooms are typically booked out over 80 percent of the working week.
With most of CSU's other systems running on an IP-based intranet, the university recently began running videoconferencing over its intranet instead of relying on its ATM network.
Although it could just as easily have used tiny PC videoconferencing units, CSU's purposes require extremely high quality, which made it choose the PictureTel 970 group videoconferencing system. A standard PC running proprietary PictureTel technology, the 970 allows lets users share both video and Windows applications-for example, PowerPoint slides-with other units.
Running over CSU's intranet, video is transferred at three times the data rate of the previous solution, providing a crisper picture as well as the ability to share other information. And since the new system uses the IP protocol, it can easily be connected to any Internet-connected device, even in places where the previous videoconferencing system couldn't reach. CSU has installed three of the new units, and still runs eight of the old systems.
"We've basically set up a teaching environment where students can see and be heard, lecturers can present the material they want and see the response they're getting from students," said Philip Roy, manager of systems and infrastructure with CSU.
"We can deliver lecturers that otherwise wouldn't occur because of cost restraints, and the quality of the IP technology allows us to do that. You can see somebody's eyes and watch their lips move at the same time as they speak, and you can hear a piece of paper rustling on someone's desk."
