Use of ATM and other computer networks in delivery of engineering education-a perspective

Meeting the needs of employees in the area served by the University of California, Santa Cruz, translates into a requirement for the delivery of graduate courses to a site 30 miles from the campus, which is connected to the campus by an ATM link (furnished under Pacific Bell´s CalREN research project). Based on this technology, we have developed the design of a “mirrored-pair” of classrooms to support distance learning. In conjunction with this, we have also considered requirements for support of remote or “distributed” faculty “electronic office hours”, as interactive sessions over a computer network. Another dimension in this digital multimedia in the educational setting is support for the capture and storage of lectures in a digital multimedia library, which offers significant potential value for improved learning and increased faculty productivity. For connecting the “mirrored-pair” of classrooms, we have used and evaluated a variety of currently available systems and software, and have concluded that significant additional research is needed to optimally utilize remote classrooms. We are currently developing those systems and software, and expect to evaluate them in the delivery of graduate courses in degree-granting programs. In this paper, we discuss our objectives and our system design which exploits the available network technology