UB taking lead in IT conferencing

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

Information-technology specialists at UB have developed a revolutionary production-grade, PC-based, high-performance videoconferencing system that is portable and available at a much lower price than previously was possible.

Faculty members at UB also have been involved in the first successful use of the system, which allows an instructor to team-teach a course-in real-time-with a colleague at Stanford University, and another to teach a course to students at UB, Clarkson and Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute simultaneously while on sabbatical in California.

The new system was developed, integrated and tested by James Whitlock, associate director of computing services, and Peter Jorgensen, senior applications analyst for academic services, both in Computing and Information Technology. Jorgensen will be the third UB instructor to employ the new videoconferencing technology later this month when he plans to teach a library-science class from the Netherlands.

Whitlock says this development marks the dawn of a new era of Internet capabilities.

The system combines existing technology in new ways. "Off-the-shelf" PC components are blended with OEM (original equipment manufacture) hardware to produce video with the high quality that has, until now, been available only using ISDN (telephone) connections.

Specifically, the UB system uses standard Internet Protocol, or IP, with a 384Kbps H.323 connection - recently approved for non-commercial use - to support a high-quality, high-performance video-conferencing connection that is transported over Internet 2.

Unlike the crowded Internet that most people use, Internet 2 is not a public network, but one shared by universities. It has a greater bandwidth and a transmission capability six times that of the original Internet, a fact that enhances video quality tremendously.

Hinrich Martens, associate vice president for computing technology, says that in simple terms, what the UB team has done is take the video signal originating at one site and convert it to an IP data signal that can be transported over Internet 2 without the interference of other Internet traffic.

The course that inaugurated the new videoconferencing process developed by UB is itself an adventure in applied information technology. "Bodyworks: Medicine, Technology, and the Body in the late 20th Century," an interdisciplinary graduate seminar being taught simultaneously at Stanford University and UB, analyzes how new technologies effect and alter cultural perceptions of the human body. The seminar was developed and is co-taught by linguist and semiotician Bernadette Wegenstein and Tim Lenoir, a historian of the philosophy of science. Both are members of the Stanford faculty. Wegenstein is a visiting professor of Romance languages and cultures in the UB Department of Comparative Literature this semester, where she is researching a project, "New Bodies-New Worlds: Corporeal Narratives at the Turn of the Millennium." The course, which examines a variety of such narratives, is astonishing for the breadth and depth of its content and for the efficacy of Web use. Well-designed from both an aesthetic and organizational standpoint, the Web site snaps with color and visual excitement. It is its lucid organization, however, that guides the "Bodyworks" pilgrim through a dozen or so tangled woods in which lurk conceptions of the physical self that most of us have never met. The clarity of the site map makes it possible to grasp the context in which discussion will take place on any given day. And they are many: bodies and machines; postmodern bodies; bodies, inscriptions and "replicants;" body sculpting; "The Matrix;" designer babies; transgendered selves; the body as revealed in cyberpunk film. During the Feb. 24 class, a Stanford student analyzed the link between the body's relationship to "reality" in the Buddhist tradition and in the 1999 futurist film "The Matrix." Noting the similarities in the way both paradigms gradually assimilate an understanding of their physical selves, she punctuated her observations with film clips demonstrating one principle after another. Everything presented live to her peers at Stanford was heard and seen clearly at the same time by her peers at UB, a fact that facilitated discussion between students at both sites. To prepare for March 14's "Cyberpunk Film" topic, for instance, the wise student will go to the course Web site to download the required readings-"Reality is Bleeding: A Brief History of Film from the 16th Century" and Don Ihde's "Bodies, Virtual Bodies and Technology."

Long-term, the developers say, the new system is expected to reduce distance-learning and videoconferencing costs substantially while opening the door to new kinds of connections.

Lisa Stephens, associate director for distance-learning operations for Millard Fillmore College, which administers distance-learning programs at UB, notes that until now, two videoconferencing sites could not communicate effectively unless both were equipped with highly specialized equipment.

"Until now, reliable and high-quality videoconferencing could only be made available over telephone lines. Because so much data has to be transmitted, however, each site required three or four ISDN lines just to accommodate the data transfer. Besides that, installation costs and monthly charges for access and use of the lines adds up rapidly," she says.

Until now, the only viable alternative to the ISDN-linked distance-learning sites has been videoconferencing over Internet 1 through standard IP without the high quality H.323-connection support.

"IP is cheap and convenient" says Whitlock, "but the Internet is crowded with millions of users, so IP connections have been much less reliable than ISDN connections. The likelihood of a crash, coupled with poor video quality at the receiving end, has discouraged IP use."

The new videoconferencing system employs cheap IP connections over a long-distance line and can use standard classrooms on each end, a cost-savings in itself. And since nearly all university classrooms already have a standard IP port in place, the system holds out the promise of ubiquitous connections through IP interactive videoconferencing.

Whitlock says the UB development effort-dubbed "UB Skunkworks"-centered on the careful testing and integration of the hardware components. This is necessary to achieve high levels of stability that would confidently support regular classroom, telemedicine and administrative applications.

Skunkworks had successes over the past year with IP ad hoc conference events sponsored by the School of Nursing. But on Feb. 10, a semester-long graduate seminar in the Department of Comparative Literature co-taught by instructors at UB and Stanford tested the new processes.

In the course, "Bodyworks: Medicine, Technology and the Body in the Late 20th Century," instructors Timothy Lenoir of Stanford and Bernadette Wegenstein of UB share several teaching tools-a Web page, locally projected images and videoclips-that are projected onto a large screen in both classrooms. They reserve the videoconference link for discussion and spontaneous student interaction. (See related story for details of "Bodyworks" course.)

The "Bodyworks" effort paved the way for a second course, "Turbulence for the New Millennium," in which instruction originating from the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) at the University of California at Santa Barbara is transmitted to students at UB, Clarkson and RPI. The instructor is William George, UB professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who is conducting research at ITP while on sabbatical.

Stephens says George had planned to teach the course as a simple ISDN-videoconferenced class, but the plan nearly fell apart when testing determined that UCSB was on a proprietary ISDN network, creating compatibility problems with other learning sites.

"We could have resolved the incompatibility problems, but the solutions were all very expensive, involving the use of commercial gateway services. What we did instead was to apply the same IP videoconferencing technology we were testing with Stanford to see if we could find a solution for Bill's 'Turbulence' class.

In this case, Stephens says, the IP link was brought into a dedicated distance-learning classroom, then sent to RPI and Clarkson through the ISDN bridge at Binghamton University, a solution that saved thousands of dollars in gateway fees.

"It took a couple of classes to get the bugs worked out, but students and co-instructors were patient and good-humored in dealing with this exciting new technology," she says.