Today, Virginia Tech employs the latest Internet technologies to help meet its 130-year-old, land-grant mission of teaching, research, and outreach. Here are just a few of the projects currently underway that highlight this junction of using new science to meet a time-tested mission.
Accessing the "information superhighway"
It's a typical afternoon during fall 2004. A father takes a break from helping his son with homework to exchange a few instant video messages and check the vital signs of his ailing mother in Quebec. A teenage girl planning an after-school party downloads a movie from the Internet in less than a minute. An executive in sweatpants and sneakers, but wearing business attire from the waist up, conducts a global sales-team meeting via video Webcast from the sofa in her den.
And surprisingly enough, the revolutionary new communications network that will make these scenarios possible will arrive in rural Southside Virginia long before it is widely available in more technology-dense portions of the commonwealth and the nation, due to a unique partnership among Virginia Tech and several educational, civic, and governmental entities.
Danville, Va., is the site of the debut of Tech's eCorridors Program. Spearheaded by Vice Provost for Outreach C. Clark Jones and Vice President of Information Systems Erv Blythe, the program is putting Virginia Tech's knowledge to work in bridging a digital, as well as economic, divide.
The idea is simple in concept. Many of Virginia's current Internet channels--fiber-optic lines running primarily north to south--pass through communities such as Danville on their way to and from larger cities. The addition of what Jones calls "on- or off-ramps of the electronic highway" will allow Danville-area residents to tap into the infrastructure. The new eCorridor routes are predicted to spark transformative economic activity in networked communities, much as interstate highways once brought new bustle to formerly isolated towns. For some of these areas, which have suffered economically due to difficulties in the tobacco and textiles industries, this could mean a new beginning.
"eDan," as the Danville pilot project of Virginia Tech's state-wide eCorridors program is called, is intended to be a proof-of-concept model for the eCorridors Program. It is also expected to serve as the prototype for a broader regional initiative known as the e58 Corridor--named for the highway that spans the area--which is being funded in part by the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Revitalization Commission. Jones, Blythe, and a team of 10 Tech employees have already begun working with other communities to plan additional eCorridors.
Jones says that communities linked by eCorridors and trained in making the most of the high-speed voice, data, and video connectivity will develop a technology-savvy workforce, attract new-economy commercial ventures, foster increased civic and political involvement, and nurture creative entrepreneurship, as well as have access to other beneficial applications, including telemedicine and online videoconferencing. "Simply put," he says, "eCorridors will level the playing field and enhance regional economic vitality for areas that have traditionally found themselves on the unfavorable side of the digital divide."
To the Virginians who will use the technology to send face-to-face messages and monitor the health of loved ones half a world away, maybe the best news of all is that eCorridors will help them be virtually in two places at once. JG
Internet2 overcomes time and distance
It sounds like the opening line of a joke: What do you get when you link up a penguin expert, a meteorologist, and a group of kids? But there's no punchline. Instead, Virginia Tech helped put together this real-life scenario to show how Internet2 (I2) can be used in the classroom.
I2 is a consortium of more than 180 universities working with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies. It functions like the Internet, but because access is restricted, there is far less traffic, making for radically higher-speed connections and a greater amount of available bandwidth.
More than a year ago, the I2 community created the K20 Initiative to broaden its user base to include K-12 schools. Tech, a member of the I2 collaboration, demonstrated just how effective a tool this new network can be in the classroom when university researchers collaborated with the Jason Project, a nationwide education program designed to teach students science, math, and technology in adventure-oriented ways. In February, the project broadcast a video conference featuring researchers in Alaska who explained their work, live, to teachers and students around the country. However, although students could call in and ask the scientists questions during the hour-long broadcast, the sheer number of participants meant that very few got through.
That's where Tech stepped in. Hud Croasdale of Tech's I2 Studio in Richmond and John Wenrich, associate director of the Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom, worked with organizations and teachers across Virginia to improve the quality of the Jason Project broadcast. They used I2 to transmit the broadcast to six selected sites throughout the commonwealth in addition to classrooms in rural areas. They also invited scientists with pertinent backgrounds--including an expert on penguins, a meterologist, a marine biologist, and a scientist who had previously conducted research in Alaska--to watch the conference with students at each of the six sites. After the national broadcast ended, the Virginia participants stayed connected, and students were able to ask scientists at the different sites questions about the presentation and to discuss local implications of the research. Croasdale says Jason Project leaders were so impressed by the Virginia experiment that they've decided to make it a model for future presentations.
Tech has other projects lined up to employ the K20 initiative in addition to working on next year's Jason Project. The university hopes to improve an existing Governors School project, where students can watch scientists live from Tech's Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, or the CAVE, and to find ways to help Virginia teachers prepare students for the statewide Standards of Learning tests.
And forget cross-country learning--one of Wenrich's projects spans the cosmos. Currently, students can go online to observatories around the country and pre-program a telescope to capture a specified image in space--the constellation Orion, for example. Wenrich is working on an option that would allow students to physically control the movements of the telescopes. Of course, the downside is that students are at home and, most likely, asleep when some of the best images are available.
Wenrich's answer? He's working with an observatory in Australia in hopes that the students could shoot a night sky when they're in school, since the time difference between Virginia and Australia is night and day, he says. And that's no joke. SB
A community connection
The Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) was initiated by a simple "what if?"--a question that proved how advantageous thinking "outside the box" can be. In the mid '80s, while working to cost effectively upgrade the university's outdated phone system, then-Vice President of Information Systems Bob Heterick and Erv Blythe, who holds that title today, looked at the sophisticated new voice/data system they had created and wondered what would happen if they wired the entire community.
Today, nine years after the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) was launched, it's plain that, as Martha Stewart would say, "it's a good thing." According to a recent survey, as of fall 1999, more than 87 percent of town residents were using the Internet, and more than 75 percent of the town's businesses were using it regularly in their marketing. In addition to providing local businesses the opportunity to sell items like clothing, games, and real estate, both locally and internationally, the BEV allows schoolchildren to learn from other students and researchers around the world and citizens to be more involved with their local government.
And Blacksburg isn't the only beneficiary, says Andrew Cohill, former director of the BEV. "We've been able to take what we've learned from the BEV and share it with other communities around Virginia. So the payoff is really statewide." One example of this payoff is the new "Getting Rural Virginia Connected" program, funded by a $748,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Technology Opportunities Program, which will provide 29 rural communities in nine Virginia counties with the benefits of the BEV experience.
Virginia Cooperative Extension is collaborating with the "BEV in a Box" program, a community network system that includes e-mail, Web hosting and design assistance, mailing lists, a community directory system, an online conference system, and professional technical support. The BEV staff will work closely with local and regional Extension agents to bring the participating counties a broad combination of what Tech has to offer in terms of technical expertise.
"The project will help rural communities in Virginia develop the capacities needed to prosper in the information-age economy," explains Cohill. "It will permanently increase the capacity of these communities to take control of and use technology effectively to improve local economic conditions. We're working with the nine counties to provide them with the same kinds of services that we have here in Blacksburg."
In addition to "BEV in a Box," the two groups will provide additional assistance to the communities as they get the effort going, including leadership and technology training for local and area Extension agents who work directly in each community; input from citizen teams comprised of a broad cross-section of each community; and guidance on determining each community's major development agenda for Internet use.
The overall goal in sharing the electronic community technology and experience is to "help communities provide a marketplace for business--to attract private investment and generate consumer demand," Cohill says.
In this case, thinking outside the box led to a solution in a box--sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. SB
High-tech teaching
It's the middle of summer, and suddenly your roses aren't looking too hot. Instead of packing into the car and driving to the nearest nursery, you can log on to the Internet and get tips from horticulture professor Diane Relf through "Annuals and Perennials," one of 52 online courses now offered to alumni.
After becoming president of Virginia Tech, Charles Steger announced his goal of extending lifelong learning opportunities to alumni. Tom Wilkinson, director of the Institute for Distributed and Distance Learning (IDDL), and his cohorts teamed up with several other groups on campus to make this goal a reality. The result? The VTalumnNET.
After its first year in use, "I think VTalumnNET has definitely fulfilled Dr. Steger's vision--access to lifelong learning for alumni," Wilkinson says. To date, almost 1,000 alumni are enrolled in the 52 courses currently available. Many of the courses are free to alumni, who may take one free course per year for life. Some of the most popular include "Annuals and Perennials"; "Study Smart," a program that teaches parents how to help their children in 7th grade and higher study better; and "Investing Fundamentals."
Sherri Turner, manager of IDDL's Instructional Program Development, which helps faculty develop the courses, says online courses are designed for convenience. "Most offer year-long access and all are self-paced--you can go in and work on a module whenever you wish."
And IDDL stays hard at work on future courses. Beginning this summer, a mini-course can teach you the basics of playing bluegrass guitar, as well as the history of the genre and what to look for when buying a guitar. The idea came from an IDDL staff member who plays. "We looked around and saw there are not many more out there like this, so we decided to do it," says Wilkinson. Another course, which will be available to alumni for a fee this fall, is "Social Aspects of the Civil War," taught by Alumni Distinguished Professor James I. Robertson Jr.
What does the future hold for VTalumnNET? In addition to continuing to offer an even wider range of courses, Wilkinson and Turner hope to provide alumni with the opportunity to keep in touch with the university and faculty members and with each other through the newly created learning community.
"We're anticipating even greater connectedness through the online learning community," Wilkinson says. "It allows alumni to talk to other alumni who are taking the same course or interested in the same topics." Turner points out just how important this sense of community is not just for Steger's goal, but for the university as a whole. "What better way to keep our alumni coming back than by allowing them to interact with people who share common interests?"
Virginia Tech is using its online technology to benefit future alumni, too, through online summer school. This added learning tool gives students the opportunity to get ahead and possibly even graduate more quickly; to shift their courseload during the regular academic year, especially important if they're holding down jobs; or to take a required class that may not have been available in the fall or spring.
"Basically, it makes education more accessible," notes Wilkinson, who says distance learning enabled his daughter to finish her bachelor's degree in three years.
From its first online summer session in 1998, Tech has more than quadrupled its course offerings, and today the more than 2,500 students projected to take advantage of the option this summer will have 91 class options.
Wilkinson adds that the number of students taking online courses also helps Tech manage capacity in its crowded classes. This may prove particularly beneficial in light of budget cuts as it will allow the university to continue providing quality learning without size and space constraints.
An interesting--albeit unintended--result of Tech's online summer school offerings that Wilkinson noticed last summer is the number of students from other universities taking the courses. "I believe it does comment on the fact that other universities may not be offering this degree of convenience," he says. SB
Curious as to whether you would be a successful distance learner? Go to http://www.vto.vt.edu/survey.php to take IDDL's self-assessment survey "Is Distance Learning Right for You?"
Jeanne Garon is the former public relations coordinator for University Outreach, University Office of International Programs, and Office of the University Provost.
