Line item appropriation, Ohio Board of Regents, $500,000, Schoolnet Electrical Infrastructure, State of Ohio $3,000,000

The University of Akron is building a Virtual Branch Campus in Medina County, adjacent to the county in which the University of Akron resides. With funding from the Ohio State Legislature, UA has created a very high bandwidth link to the county using ATM over fiber optic cable.  The pilot phase of The Virtual Branch Campus project consists of an interactive, two-way audio-visual distance classroom located within the University of Akron's library which is linked to an identical room in a Medina County high school.  Starting Fall1998, four Medina County sites will be operational and by the year 2000, the university will have multiple university-housed rooms linked to seven Medina County high schools and three other Medina County sites. Currently, the university offers undergraduate core courses to community residents early in the day and graduate education coursework later in the day.  By the year 2000, two-year college courses, undergraduate core courses, and graduate courses from relevant colleges such as nursing and education will be available to the Medina County community through the use of these classrooms.^44-49

Studies conducted and planned for the 1998-1999 school year seek to determine the most effective and efficient manner to deliver collegiate coursework using this alternate delivery system.  Research questions being considered include the amount of content a MedinaLink student is able to process the level of classroom participation, and the level and amount of interaction between the student and the instructor.  Several MedinaLink professors have attempted to measure their students' performance levels in order to determine instructional weaknesses and improve instruction through this medium.

Dark fiber has been leased from the local cable television companies to build a robust OC12 backbone connected to each classroom via an OC3.  The video and audio are encoded in MPEG2 in order to maintain full broadcast television standards.  The MPEG2 is encapsulated in ATM packets and transported over the Cisco based ATM network.  ATM is needed to provide a QoS guarantee that is needed to deliver consistently high quality audio and video.  With a teacher site and four remote sites more then 72 megabits of bandwidth are consumed

Through the implementation of this project, the residents of Medina County will have the convenience of pursuing undergraduate, graduate, or continuing education studies within their home county and also have access to all university library resources through on-line technology.  Furthermore, "virtual field trips" bring resources from all over the world to the residents of this growing county. 

Besides the benefits of the program to the current and potential students of Medina County, the instructors who teach in the distance learning classroom self-report improvement in their teaching skills and methodology.  The superior technology available in the classroom consistently challenges the instructors to find new and better ways to present media-enriched material to their students and to encourage participation from students at remote sites.

We have demonstrated the ability to use the rooms and the network to conduct remote scientific collaboration as well.