By Dave Wolover, Network Administrator

During the past year, the UW-Colleges has been working closely with UW-System Administration, DOA (BadgerNet), and UW-Extension (UWEX) to bring a Distance Education (DE) classroom to each of our 13 campuses. These DE classrooms will help bring a wider selection of courses to students within the UW-Colleges by allowing campuses to use UW- Colleges' faculty expertise from a remote campus. Also, under enrolled courses at a single campus can be merged with under enrolled courses at other campuses to allow those courses to be taught. Students will find these offerings advantageous as they work toward their degree completions or transfer to other institutions.

While increasing UW-Colleges' course offerings will be a benefit to UW-Colleges' students, collaborative offerings with Universities in the four year UW system will allow further educational opportunities. Courses taught from a four year campus to a UW-College will allow students the opportunity for advanced study in their areas of interest. All of this will be possible without interrupting their degree goals or struggling with issues of credit transfer.

Given the appropriate infrastructure, K-12 collaborations as well as DE use by other governmental or educational users may be possible. However, right now, getting the UW-Colleges up and running is the first step. Here is a brief description of what has been accomplished thus far and the direction the UW-Colleges will take to make DE a reality.

Late 1997 an RFP was drafted for the UW-Colleges DE classroom configurations. Three vendors responded by the February 3, 1998 deadline and the RFP evaluation team started its work. By March 11, 1998, a contract was signed with Ameritech partnering with Video Images to install 13 campus DE rooms and a more limited install at the Colleges' administrative office at 780 Regent Street in Madison.

Each classroom will consist of an instructor's console that will house a Crestron control system, VCR's, scanner, laser printer, personal computer, drawing tablet, CODEC and necessary audio and video equipment. Two monitors will be at the front of the room for student viewing, one for instructor presentation of materials and the other for a view of the remote site. A "virtual student", two monitors positioned approximately 10 feet in front of the instructor's console with an attached instructor camera, will allow the instructor to see a remote site as if it were a member of the class. The instructor camera allows eye contact between the instructor and the remote site during the class.

With the contract signed, final classroom analysis and designs will be completed, purchase orders processed and components ordered. Four campuses are to be installed by May 11, with the remaining due by June 11. Acceptance will be 30 days after successful ongoing operation of equipment. Faculty and technical staff training will be carried out by ICS, UWEX mid April. Vendor training for users and technical people will occur after campus installs are done.

At present, the transport to be used for the compressed video is still uncertain. In order to minimize hardware, maintenance and line costs, it was hoped that the compressed video would be carried over ATM. In this scenario, it would fit nicely with the statewide migration to BadgerNet and the SONET ring. Some obstacles need to be overcome, however, to make this a working strategy. At present, the expectation is that ICS, UWEX would be doing the bridging for the UW-Colleges, but the ICS bridge does not currently connect to BadgerNet. Also, UW-Colleges' campus circuits to connect to the SONET ring are unavailable as of this writing. Assuming the bridging issues were resolved and circuits made available, upgrading the WAN to support compressed video over ATM substantially increases the work to be done. As a fall back position, ISDN could be installed, however, with the added cost of hardware, maintenance, line installs, monthly line costs and usage costs, it would be be a more expensive option.

Even though the WAN connection method is still undecided, the UW-Colleges has received nothing but help from DO; UW-System; ICS, UWEX and its own faculty/staff volunteers. Hopefully all the hard work will soon pay off, and distance education will be just one more of our educational tools.