College piggybacks video network on phone system - San Mateo Community College District's videoconferencing system - Technology Information

Communications News, Feb, 1996 by Gus Petropoulos, Frank Vaskelis

Community colleges and four-year universities alike must identify ways to implement new tools in an environment where technical and financial resources are often limited. Briefly put, the technology quandary facing all institutions of higher learning is how to provide more with less.

At San Mateo County Community College District (SMCCCD), our information systems organization has shrunk from 28 full-time equivalents five years ago to 12 today. Yet, in that same time period, we have implemented a new telecomm and data networking infrastructure that paid for itself with dollars that otherwise would have gone towards leasing and maintaining archaic systems.

Our multimedia communications network, which we now own, continues to support cutting-edge services that enhance education for our students while they streamline internal operations and enable us to trim overhead costs. The most sizable cost savings resulted from piggybacking our data network on top of our telephone network, a move that postponed the initial need for a fiber-optic backbone that would have cost an estimated $1 million and also would have delayed implementation of the network.

With integrated voice and data networks, we canceled the separate leased lines we were using for data, saving another $60,000 per year. With interactive voice processing that will enable students to receive their grades via phone, we may be able to completely eliminate all costs associated with mailing grade reports, saving $75,000 per year.

Sizable though these savings are, the most significant benefit is the way it improved education. SMCCCD is a 25,000-student, three-college institution located south of San Francisco in suburban San Mateo County. Like other colleges, our students must juggle education and work responsibilities. Facilitating student-instructor communications with a voice mail system was one of the most immediate benefits provided.

When we first implemented the network in mid- 1990, we projected that 300 faculty would request voice mail. But in the first six months, we installed it for more than 1,000 staff members. We now have voice mail on all 1,800 phone extensions in our network.

We use voice mail to facilitate communications between faculty and students taking telecourses. All participants are provided voice mail.

For foreign language telecourses, students may even be required to leave their spoken homework assignments in the instructor's voice mail box so pronunciation and accent can be analyzed.

The voice mail service is an integral element of our Siemens Rolm 9751 CBX (computerized branch exchange) Model 70 communications network, which consists of three nodes, one at each college campus. All nodes are linked via two separate T1 communications lines for redundancy; should one path fail, the other can immediately and automatically carry the traffic between nodes.

In the unlikely event that any one node fails (all nodes are equipped with redundant processing units), traffic can be routed directly between the remaining two nodes.

This high level of remote, automated interaction could also benefit students taking interactive video-based classes planned for mid-1996. These classes will be supported with 128 kb/s, two-way interactive voice and video communications by the existing Siemens Rolm communications network. As a result, any data port on the network can be used to connect video equipment. Rather than outfitting entire rooms to serve as videoconferencing centers, we will be able to purchase mobile equipment that can be wheeled anywhere it is needed. Through ISDN links, we will be able to connect to off-campus locations for interactive video services.

The new videoconferencing capability will provide a range of educational and operational benefits, the most significant being inter-campus classes.

In the past, when enrollment in an advanced class was too low, that class sometimes had to be canceled. But by pooling students from all three campuses in a single class taught by one instructor, we can offer a greater variety of classes.

Similarly, videoconferencing will allow SMCCCD to leverage the talents and experience of its teachers at any college across wider student populations.

Since the videoconferences will be run through our central telephone switch, we may also allow off-campus, groups, such as companies in our community, to participate in our videocourses. Interestingly, in another outreach application, our communications network also provides gateway access for all 500 workstations on our network to an on-line catalog of holdings in San Mateo County's 32 public libraries. Our network also provides gateway access to the Internet.

With internal resources so stretched, our ability to implement this breadth of applications would have been limited had it not been for the support of our vendor. The lesson here is that when selecting a communications system that must not only be functional, but cost-effective as well, it is essential to obtain the implementation support and ongoing maintenance services required to leverage raw technology into a true educational tool.