From: technews <technews@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Distance-Education Offerings to Next-Generation Networks
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:28:58 -0600
Thursday, November 11, 1999
Professors Take Distance-Education Offerings to Next-Generation Networks
By DAN CARNEVALE
Some eager distance-education instructors are taking the latest, fastest
models of the Internet out for a test drive. These high-speed networks
come with enticing features -- more bandwidth and improved video quality --
but they are pricey, availability is limited, and engineers are still
working out some bugs.
For those who use the Internet for no more than the distance-education
equivalent of a trip to the corner store -- to provide text-based course
materials asynchronously to students at home -- upgrading now to the newest
network model may not be important. But some colleges are using new,
experimental versions of the Internet to offer long-distance versions of
traditional educational programs. Others hope that faster networks will
improve current methods of distance education simply by making the
technology more robust.
A roadblock looms, however: Although campus users can rely on an
institution's faster network connections, many distance-education students
who log in from their homes are still using standard telephone modems. They
might see some benefits from faster networks -- Web pages loading somewhat
faster on their machines, because the provider can deliver them to the
commercial networks faster -- but they can't take advantage of much of what
the new networks offer.
The new technology, in which an institution's connection to the Internet is
significantly enhanced, has improved geology courses in the Seattle
Community College District, says Joseph Hull, an instructor at Seattle
Central Community College. He couldn't bring all of his students to the site
of a fault line 20 miles away, so he brought the fault line to his students.
Using a television-news van and a "gigaPOP" network connection set up by the
community-college district, Mr. Hull was able to stand at the site of
geological formations produced by earthquakes 1,000 years ago, and deliver
live lectures to his students sitting in the classroom. The fast connection
allowed him to answer their questions on the spot, and the video signal
produced steady, flowing images of his lectures, rather than the fuzzy,
jerky images produced by video streaming on the Internet.
A POP is a point of presence -- the connection of a network to the Internet.
A gigaPOP is a supersized POP, which allows more information to travel
faster through one connection. The current gigaPOPs are an important element
of institutions' faster network connections, allowing information to move at
a rate of 1,000 megabits per second -- about 100 times as fast as on a
typical university network, and 4,000 times as fast as on a household modem.
By means of the television van and the gigaPOP, Mr. Hull says, "students can
get input from the traditional classroom and input from the remote
location."
"We're not really doing it to replace the traditional field trips," he adds.
"We're doing it to enhance the course." Field trips cost money, are
difficult to coordinate, and can exclude some students with disabilities, he
notes.
"It's all about bandwidth," he says. "It's having this huge capacity to
transmit a tremendous amount of data all at one time."
The improved Internet connection does come with a price. The Seattle
community-college district spent about $10,000 for the equipment and the
staff time to set it up -- and that was after forming partnerships with the
University of Washington and with local television stations, which provided
services at a reduced price.
David K. Moody, a chief engineer at the district's Seattle Community College
Television, says it is experimenting with the new technology so that
students can someday use it while taking classes at home. While most
distance-education students now connect over standard modems, experts
predict that more and more will switch to cable modems and other high-speed
connections in years to come.
The trick, Mr. Moody says, is to experiment with and develop a combination
of the old and new systems and find out what new technology can be supported
by the old one. Doing so will optimize both systems and deliver an improved
signal to students even while the equipment at homes and on the campuses is
upgraded. "It comes down to the faster the connection, the better service
you can provide," he says.
Scott A. Lathrop, program manager for the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, says that once high-speed Internet connections become standard
at universities, they will be used in more forms of distance education. But
first an adequate national network infrastructure has to be put into place,
he says.
The center, based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is part
of such next-generation efforts as Internet2. "What we're really doing is
prototyping the Internet of the future," Mr. Lathrop says. "It is evolving."
In the meantime, some of the top-speed networks are still working out a few
glitches.
Marty Dickman, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Nebraska
at Lincoln, says there is a learning curve associated with using the new
technology.
Students in his graduate plant-pathology course used a high-speed Internet
connection to communicate with students in similar classes at Oregon State
University and Kansas State University. No serious problems arose, but
sometimes the sound lagged behind the video or created distracting echoes
when someone was speaking live. The video-streaming process also had to be
tinkered with to get the images across clearly.
But nothing happened that the technicians couldn't eventually fix, says Mr.
Dickman, who gives the experience two thumbs up. After teaching the class
with the new technology for a while, he adds, he and his students have
become comfortable talking with people thousands of miles away as if they
were in the same room. "The quality is outstanding," he says. "This is not a
panacea, but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages."
The equipment did cost $40,000 to $50,000 to buy and install -- far too
much, Mr. Dickman believes, if the technology were to be used only for one
class. But the investment has been worthwhile, he says, because it has
helped people understand what can be done with the new technology.
"You can't do this on the traditional Internet with this good quality," Mr.
Dickman says.
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Copyright 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education