Distance Learning Update: July 2002

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In our new building, the College of Education at TTU is fortunate to have 3 distance learning rooms. These rooms are sometimes referred to as iTV rooms, which means "interactive televideo" rooms. Equipment installed in these rooms allows for 2 or multi-way videoconferencing with locations worldwide. We can connect both "H.320 calls" (phone line calls using ISDN) or "H.323 calls" which use the internet. Texas Tech is a member of the Internet2 community, which is a protected, very high performance Backbone Network Service (Bns) reserved principally for academic use. When we make a videoconference call to another Internet2 member, we can use this uncongested network for clear connections that do NOT incur phone company line charges.

Previously in the Administration/Education building, we had one iTV room. That VTEL equipment, which includes 4 monitors for display, is being moved to room 201 in our new building at the end of the summer2 term. VTEL iTV equipment in this room is controlled by a touch tablet with sylus, or with a wireless keyboard.

iTV room 202 does not have fixed videoconferencing equipment installed in it, but will be used in 2002-2003 for our LiveLink project. This is a virtual field experience project collaborative with Lubbock ISD, allowing students in our college to observe 'live' classroom lessons in local schools from our classrooms at TTU. Initially teachers at Bean Elementary and Dunbar JHS will participate. Rather than sending the 20 students in one of our classes to 20 different classrooms, this project will allow all students and their instructor to see the same lesson together and discuss it. If the LISD campus schedule permits, students will be able to interact and visit with the teacher following the lesson. A TIF grant (Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund) received in 2001 by our college provided for the purchase of 6 portable Polycom FX videoconference units. This are 'appliance based' videoconference units (rather than PC based) and are controlled by the instructor with a remote control. Area microphones are used rather than 'touch to talk" microphones in room 202.

iTV room 213 is our new "fixed equipment" distance learning room. Due to problems with the equipment ordered by the new building AV consultant, this room is not yet interactive and functional. We hope to have this room operational soon in Fall 2002. The capabilities of this room's videoconferencing equipment should be the same as room 201, except it will only handle H.323 connections (internet/IP based) rather than both H.320 (ISDN) and H.323.

Texas Tech University is ramping up its distance offerings to students throughout the state, most noteably with the addition of two new satellite campuses at Fredricksburg and Highland Lakes. These campuses have iTV rooms. Combined with the 10 other iTV conference rooms and classrooms administered by TTU video services and our 3 iTV classrooms, this brings the number of iTV rooms supported by TTU Video Services to 13. These rooms do not include those controlled by the HealthNET (the TTU Medical School) or those operated by the College of Engineering on the main campus and in satellite campuses in Amarillo and Midland.

The College of Education is a member of the Region 17 Information Network, which includes over 50 school districts in West Texas. We have the capability to deliver instruction and host classes via iTV with all the districts within Region 17. We also have negotiated access to provide iTV coursework to districts in ESC15 (Abilene) and ESC13 (Austin).

More information about distance learning opportunities offered by our college is available on our website: www.educ.ttu.edu/distance

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