November 3, 1994: Vol26n9: The Virtual University: It's Up and Running

By STEVE COX
Reporter Staff
Graduate engineering students at UB now have access to the best
engineering faculty talent the state university system has to offer.
Their big question: Is it live, or is it Memorex?
	SUNY's "Virtual University" is up and running. "EngiNet," as
it is known, is a cooperative project, between the engineering schools
of UB, StonyBrook and Binghamton, and the Electrical Engineering
Department of the College at New Paltz. The  project allows students
to take graduate engineering courses offered at other network schools
via videotape. Robert Barnes, director of external affairs in the
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, says it represents a
radical departure from university teaching as it has been known. In
fact, it is just the latest of several UB entrees now served up on the
information highway.
  		EngiNet courses are administered and tested through
electronic mail by professors at their schools of origin, according to
Barnes, yet they count toward degree requirements just as a UB course
would.  By next year, the four schools hope to be able to feed the
courses "live," to each other and to other students in industrial or
remote locations.
	In fact, if you are flipping cable channels in the Binghamton
area some evening, somewhere between "Barney" and "Baywatch" you might
stumble upon a lecture on "Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing."
The Binghamton Engineering Department has arranged for broadcast of
some of their courses on public access cable channels to serve
students in outlying areas, reported Barnes.
	The EngiNet is part of SUNY's Strategic Partnership for
Industrial Resurgence (SPIR), a $2 million statewide initiative to
cooperatively share SUNY's engineering research and talent with the
state's industrial sector to spur economic development. The concept
for  SPIR, and EngiNet, was developed by UB Engineering School Dean
George Lee. 
	The nursing school has undertaken a similar  project, with
plans to begin beaming courses to Cuba Memorial Hospital (see story at
right). Supporting the nursing school and other health-related
sciences is HUBNET, the Hospitals and University at Buffalo Library
Resource Network. A cooperative venture among UB's health-related
schools, many major area hospitals and Roswell Park Cancer Institute,
HUBNET links and manages the library and research resources of all the
member institutions, giving practitioners throughout Western New York
computerized access to the equivalent of 6.5 million pages of medical
data. 
	"EngiNet  extends the classroom beyond the brick and mortar,"
said Barnes. Although it now offers only graduate courses, Barnes
hopes to expand to offer undergraduate courses as well. For now, the
emphasis is on outreach. "When we are able to offer a graduate level
course to someone," Barnes explained, "it can be the start of a
relationship that could be cultivated into a matriculating student."
	Triantafillos Mountziaris, an assistant professor of chemical
engineering, is teaching UB's contribution to the network this
semester: "Materials Science and Corrosion." The four departments try
to determine what would be most useful or potentially interesting to
the industrial market they hope to reach in selecting course
offerings. For instance, Stony Brook's contribution this semester, a
course called "The Manufacturing Enterprise," is taught by a visiting
scholar who is a high-ranking vice president with the SONY Corporation
of America.
	Three times a week, Mountziaris's class meets in 120 Clemens,
a room specially outfitted for audiovisual needs. Two or three camera
operators capture both his lecture and student reactions, explained
Barnes. The camera feeds are edited together onto one videotape as the
class proceeds, so little or no post-production editing is necessary,
and the finished product can be shipped to remote class participants
right away. The equipment and talent costs nearly $350,000 a year,
which was funded through SPIR.
	Teaching such a course can require somewhat different
preparation on the part of the instructor. "You need to learn to
project and to talk into the camera once in a while," explained
Mountziaris, who attended a training session at the Albany
headquarters of the New York Network, a public access network, to
learn how to teach under talk show conditions. He also has one
teaching assistant who prepares the visuals for the course.
"Blackboards and overhead projectors don't work well with this medium,
so I had to devise a whole new set of visuals to support the course,"
Mountziaris said.
	Barnes hopes to have the capacity to have live interactive
courses operating by next fall. Even when that occurs, the course
could still be distributed on videotape to companies or individuals
who have a scheduling conflict. Since instructors are responsible for
testing and grading all their students, even the ones on the EngiNet,
the courses don't have a shelf life. "We only use each course once,"
said Barnes, "and compile new offerings every semester."