Video conferencing a part of Drinko's futuristic learning

by AMY C. BLANTON
The Parthenon

Imagine yourself and a classmate being able to work on a class project together without having to be in the same city. 

New video conferencing technology being implemented in the Drinko Library will make this possible. 

The Drinko Library was built with the idea that technology would be used in many ways in the learning process, said Allen Taylor, director of Information Technology and Planning. 

"It is estimated that there are six million video conference rooms world wide and they are used less than 15 percent of the day. In general, only two percent of the population is using video conferencing," Taylor said. 

Video conferencing can be thought of as real time video interaction from one video station to another, Taylor said. 

Taylor and the Department of Information Technology expects the use of video conferencing will increase over the next few years and they want it to be used more at Marshall. 

Currently video conference technology known as H320 is being used in distance learning classrooms in Smith Hall, the Science Building and Corbly Hall. 

The distance classrooms allow for students at the graduate college in South Charleston to take a class being taught by a professor in Huntington. 

The use of the distance learning classrooms do present some limitations. The rooms are designed to hold about 30 people. However, the classrooms are in high demand and sometimes used even when the class size does not fill the room. These rooms cost anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000, Taylor said. 

Marshall has received a grant from the Department of Commerce that will allow One Room School 2000 to be implemented. The program will allow smaller groups to use one of five conference rooms in the Drinko Library to participate in a distance learning classroom activity. A distance learning classroom designed for 30 students will no longer have to be used to accommodate the needs of ten students. Taylor said the goal is to not use all of the conference rooms in the Drinko Library for classes. 

"In addition to the classroom experience, you may have a small group that wants to get together virtually between South Charleston, Point Pleasant and here, without traveling to Huntington," Taylor said. 

The Drinko Library’s team rooms located on the second floor will also serve as access points for the video conferencing technologies. The computers in these rooms will be equipped with a camera and a microphone. These rooms will allow one or two people to participate in a distance learning activity, Taylor said. 

Plans are to add the video conferencing technology to the computer labs and individual workstations over the next year. 

"The reality of this is that you would not want to be in a pubic space talking. That is why we have added the microphone headsets to all of the workstations," Taylor said. 

The video conferencing rooms and the team rooms are expected to be available by the the fall 1999 semester. 

There are a number of new technologies that allow video content to be stored on computer and the content can be indexed. Video on demand allows a library user to use a web browser to do things like find a specific line in a famous speech, Taylor said. 

The key to being able to provide video on demand will be changes in technology. "We are seeing another revolution in the way video is being stored with Digital Versatile Disk (DVD)," Taylor said. 

The technology can be used to store many kinds of data content, including video and music. The technology is expected to revolutionize compact disks, and have great impact on video technology, Taylor said. 

DVD is already being used instead of video cassette recordings to view movies on a DVD player. 

The same DVD technology that is available to the consumer market will be available to Marshall students and faculty. 

The technology will operate over a network that goes to the computers in the Drinko Library. 

Plans are for the Mid-Ohio Valley campus in Point Pleasant to be one of the first sites to receive the DVD technology. 

It is estimated that the technology will be added to the computer labs and regional campuses by the beginning of the spring 2000 semester. 
 
 

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