April 28, 2005

Videoconferencing expands reach of classroom, lab

Approximately 25 videoconferences take place each week at Northwestern, enabling users to conduct joint classes and collaborative research projects with off-campus partners

Classroom discussions between instructors and students hundreds of miles apart, international research collaborations and cross-country job interviews are among the dozens of ways videoconferencing is being used at Northwestern.

An average of 25 videoconferences take place each week at Northwestern, and demand for the service continues to increase, according to Gretchen Guo, videoconference service coordinator for Information Technology (IT). “We hosted more than 100 videoconferences between September 1 and October 1, and fall quarter didn’t begin until September 21,” Guo said.

IT manages videoconferencing rooms at the Technological Institute, University Library (Forum Room and 2East Sony Lab) and Pancoe Auditorium on the Evanston campus, and at Wieboldt Hall in Chicago. Many University departments have their own videoconference sites, and desktop videoconferencing is becoming more widespread.

McCormick School faculty also utilize a videoconferencing and collaborative space in the Technological Institute called Access Grid, which is growing in popularity around the world. Access Grid offers a unique conferencing experience, featuring several video endpoints, as well as shared data, all displayed simultaneously on a large screen.

Videoconferencing allows Northwestern to conduct classes with other universities around the country, such as a joint course in political science with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. More extensively, a new master’s level program in the School of Communication includes 10 students who attend class entirely via videoconference, from as far away as Japan.

Faculty have used videoconferencing to collaborate on research projects with international colleagues. Videoconferencing has also been used to bring a variety of speakers, from business executives to Hollywood screenwriters, to the classroom.

Cross-cultural video events are becoming more commonplace. Guo cited a recent French Education TV Conference with 12 universities in the U.S. and France and a conference on relations between the U.S. and Muslim world held via videoconferencing with Indonesia.

Last January, Irwin Weil, professor emeritus of Slavic languages and literatures, participated in a “very successful” videoconference with the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow which involved faculty from eight U.S. universities. “I thought the video set-up was going to be unnatural. Instead, it was as if we were in the same room,” Weil said. The event was tied into the recent opening of the American Center at the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Other examples of recent teaching and research activities utilizing videoconferencing:

• The Chicago Microtechnology and Nanotechnology Community conference was conducted simultaneously in Evanston, Chicago and Tel Aviv.

• Students from the Institute of Quranic Studies in Jakarta, Indonesia conducted a joint workshop on U.S.-Muslim relations with Northwestern.

• A team from the Feinberg School of Medicine collaborated with a medical research team at the University of Turku (Finland) and three biomedical companies in Europe.

 — Marilyn Soglin