Virtually perfect: universities are finding new ways to capture, store, and retrieve content for their online courses

University Business, June, 2004 by Joseph C. Panettieri

When it comes to engaging presentation of course material and the like, U.S. colleges and universities are fast deploying classroom and Lecture hall technologies and products to keep up with their brick-and-mortar competition. But meeting the challenge of presentation in distance education has been more daunting for most traditional institutions of higher ed. That is, until now.

Genius at Georgia Tech

If presentation systems could earn tenure, Big Bertha would have Lifetime employment at Georgia Institute of Technology's Hotel and Conference Center, an integral part of Atlanta's remarkable Technology Square. Big Bertha is the nickname for Georgia Tech's mobile production studio for distance learning, and at first glance, you'd have to wonder at it being tagged "Big." During transportation, Bertha is nothing more than a big rolling suitcase about 6 feet long and a few feet high. But when opened and set up for operation in a classroom or Lecture hall, Bertha spans 40 square feet of floor space and allows the college to capture and prepare video content for use on the Web, a videotape, CD-ROM, and more.

"In terms of its capabilities, it's much like a television news van," says Christopher Hamlin, technical project director for Academic Research Technologies at Georgia Tech.

Still, though Bertha is impressive, she doesn't have the stage to herself. Across the country, universities Large and small are finding new ways to capture, store, present, and replay information via their respective distance education networks. All it takes is the right mix of equipment--cameras, video-capture cards, network pipelines, servers, digital displays, projection systems, whiteboards, and the like. Now, that may sound Like an intimidating List of requirements, but with the right IT team in place and a little research, it's possible to build video presentation systems that keep distance education students coming back for more.

Worth the Investment?

There's no way around the numbers: Deploying distance Learning systems and their associated presentation systems can cost from $:100,000 to more than $400,000 per class room. But advocates say that's money very well spent. After all, brick-and-mortar universities are now under intense pressure to keep pace with the publicly held companies that promote online degree programs to working adults, and the gold ring is spelled R-E-V-E-N-U-E. In fact, as this story goes to press, the 12 leading distance-learning companies--including Career Education Corp. (www.careered.com), Corinthian College (www.cci.edu), Strayer University (www.strayer.edu), Sylvan Learning (www.sylvanlearning.com), and University of Phoenix Online (www.universityofphoenix.com)--remain Walt Street darlings, boasting a combined market value of $40 billion, according to The Motley Foot (fool.com), a popular Web site for individual investors. In its quarter ended Feb. 29, University of Phoenix Online's revenues surged to $184 million, a 57 percent jump from the corresponding quarter Last year. And over the past 18 months, according to the same Web site, shares in publicly held education companies have delivered a 150 percent aggregate return to shareholders.

Acutely aware of the competition, traditional colleges and universities are complementing their existing classrooms with high-tech presentation and content-gathering systems--like Georgia Tech's Bertha. When rolled into a room, Bertha can be networked to control equipment Like projectors, matrix routers, and four PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) cameras. A single-mode fiber connection sends the content from Bertha to Georgia Tech's Master Control Room, where it can be distributed by any number of methods--such as VHS tape, digital video, CD, or the campus cable system. But that's not all: Hardware from VBrick Systems (www.vbrick.com) can store or stream Bertha's content as MPEG audio and video across Georgia Tech's private network or the Internet. There's a lot of technology tied to Bertha, but there's a lot of expertise behind the rolling "suitcase," too.

Importantly, Bertha has a dedicated operator, says Georgia Tech's Hamlin, and the decision to fund such a position may be key to Bertha's success. "Our distance Learning staff prefers to allow the instructors to focus on what they do best. The distance Learning staff will focus on all the technology behind the scenes."

Getting Started

For most universities, the first distance-learning challenge is capturing images, class lectures, and other types of content for Live transmission or replay over the Web. This often involves carefully selected PTZ digital cameras. Such cameras have pan-and-tilt motors that allow the Lens to follow moving objects Like a Lecturing professor working at a whiteboard. And though the technology is impressive, connecting PTZ cameras to a distance learning network is a snap. The latest cameras include built-in PC or network connectivity, and some higher-end models offer 802.11b and 802.11g wireless connectivity. Higher-quality PTZ cameras capture and transmit about 30 image-frames per second, cost about $1,500, and are available from mainstream companies such as Canon (www.canon.com) and Sony (www.sony.com), and niche technology firms such as Axis Communications AB of Sweden (www.axis.com/se).