USU connects students to world without WWW
Technical Support Services at Utah State University has begun offering videoconferencing assistance to students and faculty, so they can connect to people all over the world.
Last August, Samson Yikealo came to the United States from the Netherlands. He had completed his course work for a master’s in geographic information systems (GIS), but still needed to work on his six-month thesis.
Yikealo chose to come to USU. He worked closely with Robert Gillies, USU plants, soils, and biometeorology professor. Yikealo was required to defend his thesis in the Netherlands, but going back there would have been expensive. In addition, he wanted to continue his schooling in the United States and didn’t have enough time to go back.
Fortunately, USU was able to provide Yikealo with a solution. He and Gillies worked closely with Technical Support Services to set up a videoconference to the Netherlands.
They used a Polycom video-conferencing system and chose to make the connection over the Internet. Technical Support Services is also capable of supporting a videoconference over an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) phone line.
Yikealo said, “This one week was very critical for me. I came late [to start my thesis] and my work was very fast. With this blessing of technology, I was saved and able to graduate.”
Yikealo not only needed to interact with the professors in the Netherlands, he also wanted to show them a PowerPoint presentation.
Dale Willis, USU Systems engineer, said, “You can share PowerPoint within the Polycom system, but on a TV, the resolution is never as good as on a computer.” IT Systems Engineering determined it was better for Yikealo’s presentation if they used a separate connection.
Yikealo said, “It was wonderful. It was my first experience [with videoconferencing] and I’m more than happy. We had no problems. The voice was very nice and the quality of images was very nice.”
Willis said they had two practice sessions with the professors in the Netherlands before the actual videoconference. The first practice session was held to check the video conferencing and the second session was to test PC conferencing that would be used for the PowerPoint presentation.
Gillies said, “It was very interactive and I thought it was ideal.”
Willis said last month’s campus members were using the videoconferencing system three to four times a week. Some days, with all the testing and the videoconferencing, they had up to three calls a day.
USU also provides a service to accept up to three other videoconference calls at once. They can mix them together and sustain multiple data rates coming from the different calls.