Michael R. Jones - University of Ulster
Director of Languages Resource Unit, Coleraine Campus, N. Ireland BT52 1 SA.
Tel: +44 (0)1265 324333. Fax: +44 (0)1265 324962.
MR.Jones@ulst.ac.uk

The decision by the University of Ulster to invest in videoconferencing equipment was driven in the first instance by the communication needs of a multi-campus university, determined to maintain the strongest possible academic and administrative links between its various campuses, in spite of the considerable physical distances between its various sites.

The original installation, which became operational in October 1990, linked into a network 20-position studios, situated on the University's three main sites, via dedicated Megastream links. The studios themselves incorporated some advanced features for the time, including remote, robotic cameras controlled by a computer, using a graphics tablet and a "saved shots" system, and, on each site, a so-called 'teacher's or conference controller's desk', from which various technical devices for transmitting a variety of data and images between the sites could be controlled.

A number of successful pilot projects quickly demonstrated the potential of distance teaching via the system within the confines of the institution itself, but more far-sighted and imaginative colleagues, particularly in such areas as Community Education, Education for Mutual Understanding and Peace and Conflict Studies, soon discovered the benefits of bringing a wide variety of extra-mural groups onto the campuses, so that they could also benefit from live link-ups with remote partners, with whom they would never have come into contact in the normal course of events. These studies were documented and subsequently became the substance of in-depth research reports. Staff in Education and Modern Languages were quick to take up the challenge and linked schools across the religious divide, organising, for example, such projects as a mock Maastricht Conference on the eve of the Maastricht conference proper. This event, whereby the sixth-formers took on all the roles, such as conference delegates, advisers, interpreters between the major European languages and representatives of the press, proved to be a considerable success.

With the installation of the first ISDN 2 networks, the growing awareness of the benefits of the annihilation of distance led to a series of 'Outreach' projects with geographically remote partners, whereby the existing inter-campus, 'closed' system was linked up via ISDN with national and international external sites, thus, instead of the participants having to come to us, we could also go to them. It was, in particular, the successful alternate distance teaching of an informatics module in partnership with Imperial College, via the University of London's LIVENET system, which subsequently prompted the University of Ulster to give the system a truly international capability by installing at its heart, in the Spring of 1995, a powerful MCU conforming to the H320 international videoconferencing standard.

This Multipoint Control Unit enables the the system to "bridge" either one large videoconference - of up to five participating sites, located, if necessary, anywhere in the World - at any one time, or up to three separate, dual-point events running concurrently and completely separately.

The new capability has added a much greater degree of flexibility to the system and allowed more sophisticated projects with a variety of international partners. Thus colleagues in Business Studies now hold regular tutorials with their year-out placement students at Universities in France or Germany, whilst colleagues in the Social Sciences and Education concentrate more on the links with special Outreach Study Centres that have been established both in the north and south of Ireland. The different faculties have each developed a range of distance teaching projects. Thus, within the Humanities, a number of colleagues have recently found ourselves lecturing in Coleraine to students from the Baltic Fringe countries assembled in Finland and pursuing a modern media course at the University of Helsinki - the Finns in general are among the leaders in the field of videoconferencing in Europe. In similar vein, I also recently gave a lecture to the annual conference of the European Union Studies Association of New Zealand, who were assembled in Auckland University, from the studio on the Coleraine campus of the University, at a rather early 05.00 hrs. in the morning.

Various Telematics projects have also been spawned by the system, including several which involve University staff linking into remotely sited schools or FE learning centres in order to provide 'on the spot expertise' at a distance. Probably the most ambitious project in this area has been the 'Ulster Telematically Controlled Language Laboratory Project', which was developed in-house by a joint team of Humanities and Educational Services staff and was successfully demonstrated last year at both the EAEEIE Telematics conference, which was held in Oulu, Finland in June 1996, and in the course of a trans-European link-up between a number of different countries and locations, which was organised at the September conference of CercleS, held in Dresden in the same year. By means of this system the teacher, seated at a remote PC, is able to mimic all the functions of a Tandberg language laboratory console and thus, by means of both full data and video links (via a VC7000 unit), to control a language labororatory class remotely, from anywhere to anywhere in the world.

Future plans include the development of more flexibile and portable desktop and rollabout systems, to enable anyone, anywhere to link into the existing major systems, but also the expansion of distance teaching, particularly of languages, on a multi-site basis.

Michael Jones has taught German at third level for the last 30 years and is Chairperson of the Standing Conference on ab initio German in the UK and Ireland.. Since taking over responsibility for the Languages Resource Unit and Faculty computing he has published extensively over the last decade in the area of Educational Technology and contributed to many conferences on topics such as interactive video, telematics and videoconferencing in teaching and learning. From 1990-1996 he was on part-secondment to the University's Educational Services Unit as Campus Co-Ordinator of AV Services and Videoconferencing Manager.

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