A clear exchange of ideas

What can happen to learning if educational pedagogy ever catches up with technology. A high-definition video communications system for Australia’s universities and research institutions has been unveiled by AARNet and Cisco, and already has a series of converts with Swinburne, Victoria, Melbourne, Queensland and Monash universities among the early adopters. Deakin is also poised to join the fold. For many universities the introduction of telepresence or immersive video-conferencing, where the other party seems to be in the same room, is seen as a way to introduce administrative efficiency – but for others, such as Victoria University, it is being viewed as radical change agent, able to deliver whole new learning opportunities. The TelePresence Exchange, which has been launched by AARNet in association with Cisco, acts a little like a telephone exchange, but is used to connect multiple telepresence sites in Australia. Internationally it has a gateway to the National Lambda Rail video-conferencing network in the US which connects over 225 telepresence rooms in 71 institutions around the world. AARNet has been working on video-conferencing technologies for a number of years, first with its bookable National Video Conferencing Service (NVCS) – then in 2010 it unveiled plans for AARNet anywhere that connected up to seven people on the AARNet network, although two years on, that service remains a pilot.Telepresence takes video communications to a new level, allowing virtual meetings to take place in special purpose rooms designed so that the high definition, large screen video image seems to mesh seamlessly with the room where it is viewed. Telepresence rooms generally use the same colours and furnishings to achieve this result and show lifesize images on the screen.Professor Richard Constantine pro vice-chancellor (information services) and chief information officer at Flinders University has been closely monitoring the establishment of the exchange, having chaired AARNet’s advisory committee for the last three years. He is now reviewing how telepresence can be introduced particularly to link the university’s operations in Adelaide, Darwin and Alice Springs.In his former recent role as chief information officer at Swinburne University of Technology he oversaw the rollout of telepresence, thanks in part to government grants. A special purpose 18-seat telepresence auditorium has been created at Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus. This can be linked to other videoconferencing suites used on the university’s different campuses or to international telepresence sites. Swinburne has also used the TelePresence Exchange to connect to a system installed at the radio telescope at Parkes, NSW.Daniel Buttigieg, acting associate director of infrastructure information technology services at Swinburne says the university has telepresence systems in meeting rooms across its Hawthorn, Prahran, Wantirna, Croydon and Lilydale campuses along with the CSIRO Parkes Observatory. “The telepresence system enables small groups of both students and staff to meet across campuses, (around a virtual table) to collaborate on a range of projects and activities. Team members are able to participate in real-time, life-like, face-to-face meetings over the network, without needing to travel to another location. Images are in high definition and transmitted life-size with directional audio.” The exchange is expected to facilitate similar sorts of meetings between Swinburne and institutions here and overseas.While video-conferencing isn’t new, it has been somewhat clunky in the past, and often needed technicians to help. “The beauty of the technology now is that it ties in with your IP telephony system…you can just dial a four digit extension number,” says Constantine. He says the quality of service has improved dramatically in recent years.Importantly the TelePresence Exchange also permits different brand video-conferencing equipment to interact – which hasn’t always been the case. Constantine acknowledges that; “I worried about investing in a white elephant and dreaded the day my VC wanted to speak to someone at another university using different technology,” which led him to press hard for the TelePresence Exchange to handle all brands of equipment.Ken Boal, director of public sector business for Cisco in Australia New Zealand says that; “The market was pretty loud in telling us it wanted interoperability to talk to legacy platforms.” With interoperability in mind Cisco developed the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP), management - which has since been transferred to the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium to ensure sessions are possible regardless of the equipment used. Constantine believes universities need to “change today’s paradigm to make use of this technology.” Boal says a growing range of business drivers are encouraging universities to explore immersive videoconferencing and telepresence including the need to meet participation targets set by government while navigating the cost pressures as overseas revenues tail off. Telepresence can also underpin stronger international relationships with other universities, and provide important communications linkages to industry he asserts.Phil County, executive director of technology and knowledge strategy at Victoria University, says boundaries are breaking down and “becoming more permeable”. He argues that flexible learning spaces, coupled with telepresence “could be a game changer” in terms of the way universities operate, collaborate and educate.Boal says that by investing in the TelePresence Exchange Cisco believes it has removed an inhibitor for universities who want to embark on telepresence and immersive videoconferencing initiatives. However, there is more to do and Boal says he hopes by the end of this year it will be possible to connect even more devices, making use of video facilities on PCs or iPads, for example. Universities which already run the Cisco unified communications platform can already achieve that, but it’s trickier for intra-university links. “The second phase of works is to build out the interoperability with AARNet,” says Boal.Similarly it’s still complicated for universities to set up telepresence sessions with industry via the TelePresence Exchange. Although some international video-conferencing exchanges have been developed by companies such as Telstra, Tata and AT&T Boal acknowledges that the commercial models for these exchanges are still evolving. Nevertheless he feels that in time it will be possible for a Boeing or Proctor & Gamble to dial up a telepresence session with an Australian university.Victoria University presently is less focused on the external industry opportunities, and more on the way in which telepresence and immersive videoconferencing can revolutionise the business of learning. Phil County says that telepresence is part of a bigger picture where Victoria University wants to engage with a broader learning community. For the last 12-18 months the university has been working on its Learning Spaces of the Future program.It’s rolling out 12 Cisco Telepresence systems now and plans to start using them later this year with a view to their becoming fully integrated with a range of educational programs in 2013.It has already spent “a few million (dollars)” building a series of new “fluid and elastic” learning spaces according to County. These feature telepresence capability, to attempt to change the way in which education is delivered and “expand the opportunities and horizons for people in the community”.County adds that the university is also looking at setting up learning spaces of the future in areas where it has international partnerships such as in China and Malaysia. To some extent the educational pedagogy is now playing catch up with what the technology will allow, he acknowledges.The AARNet network will underpin most of the videoconferencing in the learning spaces of the future rooms – the exchange runs on the AARNet 3 network which offers speeds up to 10 Gbps, with the bandwidth needed to support a telepresence meeting with 96 people at the highest resolution. But County notes that the National Broadband Network has always been “in our minds eye” as that can be leveraged to allow much broader videoconferencing reach for flexible learning programs. n