Imagine...

A member of the Film and Television Department at City College, teaching a course on film criticism, learns that a leading film actor is taping this semester's session of CUNY-TV's American Theatre Wing. The actor has graciously consented to speak with an assembly of CUNY students immediately following the taping at the Graduate Center studio location. Coincidentally, the City College film criticism course meets at exactly the same time. With a flick of a hand-held remote, the City College professor and his class join a lively discussion with the actor and with CUNY colleagues located at City, Staten Island, and Hunter, respectively.

or...

In last week's Lehman College class on U.S. history in the twentieth century, the instructor has introduced a unit on the Great Depression. This presentation included laserdisc materials owned by Hunter, videotape in Lehman's Library, and various World Wide Web materials from the Internet. By advance schedule, playback of these sources was accomplished by the Lehman College instructor through use of a hand-held remote control over CUNYNet, with the sources playing from the remote locations to the Lehman classroom. This week, the unit continues with a guest lecture on the economic recovery to be delivered by a friend of the Lehman College instructor. The guest lecturer is a member of the Economics Department at Baruch College. The only hitch in the plan is the fact that the guest lecturer must meet his own students at Baruch less than one hour following the Lehman session. No problem, however. When the Lehman students enter their classroom, they find their instructor and the guest lecturer easily chatting at the front of the room and, once the official class session begins, the students are quickly drawn into a fascinating presentation. When it is over, the video conference is disconnected with the flick of that same hand-held remote.

or...

A member of the French Department at Brooklyn College is working with a colleague from the College of Staten Island. Together, they coordinate a series of honors student colloquia, scheduled for the first Tuesday of every month at both colleges at 2:00 PM. The series features poetry and dramatic readings, research reports, and panel discussions and debates-presented by students at both colleges to their peers at both locations simultaneously. Panels and debates include multiple participants from both locations. All presentations are richly illustrated with either student-produced multimedia materials or resources selected by student presenters from the library and media collections of CUNY. The students are so excited by this collaboration that they have requested time on the system to plan their own Web-based journal of research.

or...

It's the third Wednesday of the month at 10 AM and CUNY-TV CUNYNet, a real-time event on the private CUNY instructional resource network that is a monthly supplement to the annual CUNY Jobs Fair. Computer science students all over the University are in attendance at this month's career briefing which features a presentation by a leading computer hardware manufacturer. They are introduced to the overall market, industry projections, corporate structure, and current and projected employment opportunities within the company and in the industry in general. The program, taped for later airing on the proprietary CUNY resource network, also features a question and answer period in which students and employers explore areas of mutual interest. More than one career path is illuminated by the real world information provided by the prospective employer. Next month, a major health care provider will be offering its perspective on industry and employment futures.

Such imaginings are quickly becoming reality as we work to transform CUNYNet from the voice and data network it is today into an interactive instructional resource network, capable of sharing real-time events and a variety of resources, regardless of their format. With the assistance of the Educational Technology Initiative, a New York State capital project funded in 1994-95 and again in 1996-97, CUNY/CIS has embarked on building this resource as an affordable reality. With initial focus on senior college installations in the first phase through 1997, community college installations are planned beginning in 1998.

Known as the CUNY Media Distribution System, this project represents the creation of a video-enhanced CUNYNet as its basic delivery medium and integrates three complex technologies-a media distribution system, video conferencing technology, and whiteboard/presentation devices-into a unique environment that is being designed to serve the needs of CUNY faculty and their students into the 21st century.

Resources on Demand

Fundamental to the CUNY Media Distribution System is the concept of network access to a core of University-owned resources in libraries and instructional media collections that are already powerful adjuncts to classroom instruction. However, due to the physical limitations of their formats, these materials are not easily or widely used, especially outside of the college that owns them. With source devices like VCRs and laser disc players integrated into the new instructional network, it becomes possible to play a source in one CUNY location for delivery to an audience at one or several additional CUNY locations (pending proper licensing arrangements). This resource-sharing aspect of the Media Distribution System is indeed an exciting concept. With the bibliographic retrieval system for film and media titles at most colleges already built into the CUNY+ online catalog, CUNY faculty at any site in the University will eventually be able to instantly identify remote resources, access and/or schedule them from anywhere in the network to anywhere in the network and augment their scheduled presentation "on the fly" with additional resources as classroom discussion or late-breaking news items might require.

From the outset, a crucial element of the Media Distribution System project design has been the integral involvement of CUNY-TV, the University's cable television station which reaches over 1.5 million homes in the New York metropolitan region. With a wealth of instructional programs already licensed for University-wide use in its broadcast library, and a broadcast schedule that has been incorporated as an automatic play feature within the Media Distribution System's touch-screen control panels, CUNY-TV represents a powerful resource to CUNY faculty and students, and a resource that has been virtually invisible at the campus level for far too long.

Prototype Installations

Once funding became available, the initial implementation of the CUNY Media Distribution System consisted of prototype installations at the City College, the Graduate Center, the College of Staten Island and at CUNY/CIS. These prototype sites contributed richly to the overall project design: City College and Staten Island were already implementing campus-based Dynacom Information Integration Systems; CUNY-TV at the Graduate Center provided a rich programming and production resource to the network, and CUNY/CIS as the hub facility represented a mix of the training, networking, multimedia development, and video conferencing programming/expertise. Thus, the prototype project represented a strong alliance of CUNY partners with various important perspectives, pedagogical and technical as well as central and local, in system design and development. Prototype installations were operated in test mode through 1996 at 57th Street, the Graduate Center and City, with the College of Staten Island (already implementing its own 48 room local area media distribution system) added to the prototype group in 1996-97.

As a result of the prototype projects, a basic "starter kit" for the CUNY Media Distribution System was finalized and is being installed at five additional senior colleges (Baruch, Brooklyn, Hunter, John Jay and Lehman) in late spring and summer 1997. A starter kit consists of a two room installation with appropriate network infrastructure at each site: a small but upgradable head-end, or control room, and a presentation room. Eventually, it is anticipated that these installations will include many more rooms on each campus and many more source devices at each head-end.

Key Technical Elements

The underlying infrastructure of the CUNY Media Distribution System is CUNYNet, the University's proprietary T/1 network. Currently, all CUNY colleges are connected via at least one T/1 line, leased from the telephone company, to the 57th Street hub. In this first phase of the project, by layering an additional T/1 line over these existing connections, transmissions that are both affordable and acceptable from the standpoint of visual quality will provide the transmission medium for the Media Distribution System. It will be on these new T/1s that the Media Distribution System will send signals representing actual video conference events or analog and digital sources from one college to another, or from several colleges as points of origination to several other colleges as points of program destination. n addition, via ISDN dial-up circuits installed at the 57th Street hub facility as well as at college locations, remote sites outside of the CUNY network can be integrated into any interactive video conference event. Thus, the project has been designed to capitalize on CUNY's existing network topology but it is also ready for upgrade to ATM and other high-speed networking technologies that are on the horizon and will eventually be integrated into the CUNYNet backbone.

Beyond CUNYNet, the centerpiece of the CUNY Media Distribution System is the Dynacom/Safari Integrated Information System which leverages an institution's disparate multimedia technologies (such as videotape, laser disc, CD-ROM, etc.) by bringing all of the needed equipment into one location-i.e., the head-end, or command center. The results are that media becomes centralized within the institution; that information becomes easy to access; and the instructor is able to schedule information delivery and command the use of that information from one simple control interface in an appropriately networked classroom. After rigorous independent evaluations, two of the prototype participants, City College and the College of Staten Island, had already committed to local campus-based implementation of the Dynacom/Safari system and provided essential input into the design of the wide area CUNY implementation. Within the context of the CUNY Media Distribution System, Dynacom head-ends at each campus location in CUNYNet will be able to schedule and deliver information resources to each other, and the Dynacom system will serve to integrate the video conferencing and intelligent whiteboard components into a single command and control environment. Indeed, much attention has been given to the construction of a graphical user interface and a touch screen control station that will translate these sophisticated technologies into a user-friendly faculty workstation. This will bring the resources of CUNY itself and, through the Internet, those of the world outside into the CUNY classroom at a faculty member's fingertip control.

The video conferencing element of the system enables two-way interactive video communication between and among multiple sites and provides document sharing capabilities. With transmission speeds from 56 kbs to 1.544 mbs, the video conference equipment maximizes performance at higher bandwidths, providing clear, precise and timely delivery of multimedia programs in instructional settings. To ensure a natural flow of communication in multi-point events, the CUNY Media Distribution System employs infrared remote camera and audio tracking systems. With these complementary technologies, video conference cameras follow the instructor/main speaker and switch to questioners at remote sites via audio activation.

Finally, presentation technologies included in the CUNY Media Distribution starter kit include a presentation "wall" consisting of two large (35") monitors that serve to display information resources and participants at remote sites. These monitors are placed on either side of a Xerox LiveBoard, which is a rear projection display screen with a built-in Pentium CPU that integrates video sources into its display. Within the context of the CUNY Media Distribution System, the LiveBoard becomes not only a networked computer application and video display device, but a shared instructional space that allows all participants, regardless of their location on the network, to modify information with the stroke of an electronic pen.

Next Steps

The current timetable anticipates the installation of CUNY Media Distribution System starter kits at all remaining CUNY senior colleges and at the first community college sites on the network by the end of the 1997-98 academic year. By summer 1997, a dedicated video conferencing hub will be completed at CUNY/CIS and will serve as a central programming and high-end training location. Just as design and installation has been the focus in the initial phase of the project, training for technical staff and end-users alike will become the next focus of activity. The 1997-98 academic year will be marked with training opportunities at all participating sites.

Once the training is complete, we will face many challenges as we try to both understand and command this powerful system. Working together, colleagues can decide how to use it well and wisely as a professional development environment and as a research and instructional resource. As teachers and researchers, we have the chance to re-shape education for the future. Using network tools, we can guide our students into new channels of resources, enabling them to learn and excel in the new millennium.