Global Lecture Hall (GLH) of The U.S.-Russian Electronic Distance Education System (EDES)
at the occasion of TELETEACHING'93, Trondheim, Norway, Saturday, August 21, 1993
15:30 to 18:00 (Trondheim), 9:30 to 12:00 (EDT/USA)
We are living through a historic era which offers Newly Independent States (NIS) an opportunity to use innovative technologies to assist them in becoming democratic, modern, market oriented societies and nations. New communication technologies have proven to be an effective and low cost means of providing education and exchange of ideas among different peoples.
During TeleTeaching '93, GLOSAS/USA will conduct a "Global Lecture Hall" (GLH) (TM) multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconference. This will cover the Americas and all of Europe, including the NIS and the Baltic using seven satellites. (Teleteaching '93 is the third international conference on the applications of telecommunications to enhance human knowledge and skills organized by the International Federation for Information Processing - IFIP.)
A panel discussion on "Compressed Digital Video, Its Quality and Applicability to Instructional Television" will be held by members of the National Technological University consortium. From different locations they will simultaneously uplink to a single satellite transponder using compressed digital video (CDV) technology. The analog version of their composite video will be sent to Russian students in Moscow through Brown University's digital video link with Moscow Space Institute and at the same time be broadcast worldwide, including Trondheim, Norway. The objectives are to demonstrate the cost effectiveness of the CDV technology and to provide a face-to-face meeting via satellite for prospective faculty and students of EDES. In addition to CDV, Professor Kevin Jeffay of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will demonstrate the potential of the new color, full-motion videoconferencing technology via a packet-switching data communication network, albeit one still limited to a campus range. Dr. Richard Cogger of Cornell University will also demonstrate CUSeeMe (pronounced "See You See Me") - the Macintosh videoconferencing software which relies on the Internet to send/receive black and white images. Eight participants, some from as far away as the West Coast, Moscow, Canada and New York, will each be allotted a "window" on the Macintosh monitor. The composite of such windows will be broadcast via satellite for worldwide viewing. A video of NASA's "Advanced Communications Technology Satellite" (ACTS) will also be broadcast. ACTS enables ultra high speed (1 Gigabit/sec) transmission of data with on-board processing and switching and using multiple high-powered spot beams and small, low-cost ground terminals.
GLOSAS is currently working to establish a U.S.-Russia Electronic Distance Education System (EDES) with the Association of International Education (AIE) in Moscow. AIE was recently created by the Ministry of Science, Higher Education and Technology Policy of the Russian Federation and GLOSAS/USA. Russian students will use EDES to access distance educational courses offered by the consortium schools of Global (electronic) University in the U.S.A. (GU/USA). Russian and later other NIS students will interact with North American instructors and classmates at a distance, using consortium sponsored channels of communication such as supplied by INTELSAT's Project ACCESS.
Global (electronic) University (GU) (TM) consortium, a divisional activity of GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A. (GLOSAS/USA), seeks to improve the quality and availability of international educational exchange through the use of telecommunication and information technologies. GLOSAS/USA is a New York publicly supported, non-profit, educational service organization. The GU's main objective is to achieve global electronic distance education by developing a cooperative infrastructure and by bringing the powers and resources of telecommunications to ordinary citizens around the world. This will mean open access to some of the world's finest resources with a far greater variety of educational philosophies, courses and instructional styles than could ever be found on a single campus, thus creating an electronic, 21st century version of the Fulbright exchange programs.
Over the past two decades GLOSAS/USA played a major role in extending the U.S. data communication networks to other countries, particularly to Japan, and deregulating Japanese telecommunication policies for the use of electronic mail. This was emulated in many other countries. GLOSAS has conducted a number of GLHs employing inexpensive media accessible to the less developed countries, interlinking universities ranging from Japan to Turkey, Finland, New Zealand, and North and South America. These demonstrations have helped build a network of leaders in the global electronic distance education movement. They have also generated considerable interest among various organizations around the world. International associates of GLOSAS are currently working on the establishment of Global Pacific University (GPU), Global Latin American University (GLAU) and Global European University (GEU).
Global education via satellite and other telecommunication media is the way towards the 21st century Age of Knowledge, laying a social infrastructure for citizenship in the global village. Extending communications through a global network and sharing ideas and educational opportunities with other locations is of paramount importance. The exchange of knowledge among countries can make major contributions to world peace by helping to ease frictions and by promoting joint research and development, mutual exchange and understanding. Developments in global electronic education can transform education at all levels around the world and can enrich human society.
Global University is an evolutionary concept with no global precedent. Global education is a major key to sustainable survival. Technology is now available. What we need now are people who are eager to face the challenges of our time and to forge ahead toward the 21st century.
Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D.
Chairman, GLOSAS/USA
President, GU/USA
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URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/news33.htm
July 1993
GLOSAS NEWS was orinally posted to the WWW at URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/cont.htm by Tina Evans Greenwood, Library Instruction Coordinator, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado 81301, e-mail: greenwood_t@fortlewis.edu, and last updated May 7, 1999. By her permission the whole Website has been archived here at the University of Tennessee server directory of GLOSAS Chair Dr. Takeshi Utsumi from July 10, 2000 by Steve McCarty in Japan.