University of South Florida Nurses Video Conferencing Onto the Internet
Debbie Cantero teaches pharmacology to nursing students located at five sites
across Florida. The University of South Florida instructor lectures and interacts
with her students using video conferencing over IP networks, a technology tool
that has become an integral part of USF’s extensive distance-learning program.
“There is a shortage of nurses in Florida,” says Cantero. “Distance
education makes it possible for more people to pursue nursing as a career or
to obtain advanced degrees if they are working nurses.”
With more than 14,000 students in more than 300 distance-learning courses,
USF is one of the country’s biggest providers of distance education. For
some time, it has been a leader in adopting new distance-learning technology,
delivering its current curriculum using a variety of media, including one-way
video and Web-based systems. More recently, the campus has been using video
conferencing, first relying on Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) lines
for delivery and now venturing into video conferencing via the Internet, using
Polycom Inc.’s MGC-100 multipoint control unit (MCU). It enables video
conferencing for distance education, academic conferences, administrative meetings,
and research collaborations.
According to Lynn Rejniak, director of research and development for educational
outreach, IP capability was critical to USF’s distance-learning objectives.
“The Polycom MCU provides USF with the necessary versatility to support
the move to H.323 IP services,” she notes. The H.323 protocol is the backbone
of high-speed video conferencing using Internet 2, the faster, better-performing
Internet. At the same time, the Polycom MCU still supports ISDN transmission—important
because many of USF’s partners and collaborators continue to rely on the
ISDN H.320 protocol. This way, USF maintains a safe path from ISDN to IP for
itself and the parties to which it links.
Adoption of the system has had a number of immediate benefits, according to
Rejniak. “Software management is much easier,” she says. “We
needed ease of operation and a short training time with the system so that our
staff—many of whom are part-time or students—could get up and running
with it quickly.”
The Polycom system also easily adapts to various configurations. With IP video
conferencing, portable video conferencing endpoints can be easily transported
to any location with an appropriate network connection for short-term or long-term
use. This facilitates USF’s use of IP video conferencing at community colleges
and other “fixed” distance-learning sites, as well as at one-time
guest lectures or conference sites.
In the classroom, the Polycom system enables instructors to adapt the video
conference to suit the occasion. Instructors, or the technical staff assisting
them, can alternate between a fixed lecture-style presentation where they are
the only presence on the screen, to a “continuous presence,” in which
up to nine sites are in view on the screen simultaneously.
Instructors can use the screen to reflect the classroom style, whether it is
a didactic presentation or a discussion group. They can make changes on the
fly, simply by clicking and dragging icons. There are 21 presentation styles
available with the MGC-100.
Students participating in video conference-enabled distance-learning courses
meet at designated sites near their homes or businesses. For instance, nursing
students may gather at the hospital that employs them rather than travel for
an hour or more to reach USF. Polycom’s MCU connects USF to community colleges,
hospitals, and other venues around the state. “We rely on Florida’s
28 community colleges to help us deliver distance learning,” Rejniak says.
“And video conferencing is the distance-learning format of choice for them.”
More than 35 percent of USF’s distance-learning courses implemented video
conferencing last year, making it one of the most important tools the program
uses. Outside of the classroom, however, researchers and administrators are
also finding uses for video conferencing. One of USF’s prominent marine
biologists is using video conferencing to collaborate with a colleague at the
University of Hawaii on a project to study the impact of shark attacks on submarine
cables. USF and the Universidad del Norte in Colombia have developed an ongoing
collaboration using video conferencing to help the South American institution
implement many of the technology tools USF has adopted. And administrators at
the four USF campuses have found video conferencing to be a valuable tool, using
dedicated IP-based video conferencing rooms to meet with one another.
Currently, USF offers three degree programs completely off-site: master’s
programs in engineering and public health and advanced degrees in nursing. During
the next few years, USF hopes to increase the number of complete distance-learning
degree programs.
“Portability is very important to us,” Rejniak says. “Being
able to literally pack up the equipment into a briefcase and take it to where
it is needed gives us the flexibility we need to develop new applications and
programs as we need them.”
For more information, contact Lynn Rejniak at [email protected].