Access Grid enhances intercampus class

A high-tech triumph over the video conference call, the so-called Access Grid, is advancing Purdue's inter-university collaborations while it revolutionizes multimedia education.

This semester, Purdue, Indiana and Iowa State universities are using the Access Grid, an Internet-based, high-speed network of more than 70 domestic and international sites, to co-teach the graduate-level course "Introduction to Virtual Reality" on all three campuses simultaneously.

Purdue's Access Grid, in Room 209 of Stewart Center and in the Envision Center, underneath Purdue Memorial Union, clearly is the right tool for the task, using multiple cameras that make it possible for professors and students to move around the room and incorporate non-digital materials into their communications. It also supports multimedia display software programs, such as PowerPoint and MPEG video, and OpenGL windows, and provides real-time video and audio.

The main difference between the Access Grid and other distance education courses is that the Access Grid allows for live lectures, such that students at all sites can be actively involved in each lecture. Students from remote sites can contribute to class, ask questions, have discussions with other students and present classroom research.

"As far as we know, this is the first time a course has been offered for credit on Access Grid," says Laura Arns, visualization and computer graphics applications engineer and Purdue's instructor for the course.

Arns says the Access Grid far outdoes the video conference call.

"For starters, you can connect more than two sites, which is more than you can do with video conferencing," she says. "When we do our lectures, we have PowerPoint slides that we share back and forth; the instructor in Iowa can draw on the PowerPoint screen so our students can see, and we can play a video and talk about the video while it's playing."

The technology takes some getting used to for students at first, Arns says, especially when it comes to student discussion over the virtual transom.

"It takes a little time for the discussion to get going. But once they get used to it, they really do a good job of jumping in," she says.

Arns expects the course to grow, possibly including students at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and Ohio State.

She also says that eventually it will create efficiencies for all campuses involved by limiting the number of instructors to one or two, rather than one at each campus.

For information about using the Access Grid, go to www.itap.purdue.edu/telecom/ag/.

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