This document discusses video conferencing and its use in higher education. It begins with introductions and an overview of video enabled collaboration technologies. It then discusses issues with traditional conferencing and what is needed to improve usage. There is discussion of the changing conferencing landscape including emerging trends like cloud services and software endpoints. Specific examples of doctoral networks in the UK using video conferencing are provided. A new V-Scene conferencing service launching in the UK in July 2014 is outlined. The document concludes with considerations for what technologies to use based on needs and available options.

1. Rob Bristow, NREN Exchange Fellow,TENET
25/06/2014
Bridging the gap - The use of Video-conferencing to
support higher education

2. Introductions
» Who am I?
› On secondment from Jisc in the UK for two years
– Part of Jisc Futures division
– Worked at Jisc on video-conferencing projects
› What is Jisc?
– UK NREN parent company
– Janet is theTENET equivalent
– Jisc runs services and development programmes in all areas of technology
and tertiary education
› What do I/Jisc know about video-conferencing and education?
– Quite a lot!

3. Teliris Express Telepresence conference
What isVideo enabled collaboration?
» Anything that involves collaboration and video (but may
also include other things)
» FromTelepresence to the desktop
» Room-based conferencing
» Desktop conferencing
» Web conferencing
» These things are now converging – mobile is here
» The goal is a system that spans from web-conferencing
toTele-Presence
» How to join things up?
» Interoperability!
Teliris Express Telepresence conference

4. What’s wrong with conferencing?
» The room is booked out or locked
» The support people have gone home
» The equipment is out of commission
» There is echo on the audio feed
» The camera only shows tiny thumbnails of participants
» The network is up and down and the video quality makes this sysytem unusable
» I can conference from a room but why can’t I join from my laptop or cell phone or iPad at my
desk, or at home or from anywhere in the world?
» I want to easily share content from whichever device I am using
» Etc…
26/11/2013 JiscCo-design 4

5. Video-conferencing
»Parts to this talk:
› Jisc’s work with the environmental credentials for
Video-conferencing
› The changing landscape of video-conferencing
› V-C enabled Doctoral networks in the UK
› The newV-Scene service (launches July ‘14)
› An interesting use case
5

6. Jisc project on video-conferencing: Key benefits
» Reduced stress & time of travel (75%)
» Better control of time (61%)
» Easier to stay in touch (49%)
» Better work-life balance
» Compensate for travel difficulties
» Easier to arrange meetings
» Involve more people
» Improved communication with external partners
» Tangible travel and subsistence savings
26/11/2013 JiscCo-design 6

7. Disbenefits
»Reduced face to face contact (19%)
»Less effective meetings (16%)
»Bad experiences
»Can’t replace face to face
»Better when relationships established
26/11/2013 JiscCo-design 7
“In a virtual meeting do you get virtual tea and
biscuits?”

8. Barriers to Greater Use
»Difficulties (perceived or actual)
in setting up
»Lack of confidence or ability to
use technology
»Lack of equipment or facilities
»Lack of support from colleagues
»Lack of knowledge about
facilities
8

9. Jisc Project conclusions
» There are considerable benefits accruing from, and opportunities for more,
virtual meetings
» Virtual meetings don’t always replace travel
› new uses
› stimulating contact
» Considerable CO2 benefits for all
› largest element in research intensive universities is (long haul) air
» Air travel generally dominates CO2 equivalent travel
» But overall business benefits are mainly related to short-medium distance
travel air travel
» Best maybe to target UNPRODUCTIVE travel?
9

10. What’s Needed - Universities
» Technical support
» Training
» Ease of booking
» Suitable dedicated facilities
» Conferencing “champions”
» Institution-wide policy and support
» Culture of usage supported by senior staff
» Target areas of existing use (audio, skype
etc)
10

11. State of play of conferencing
09/10/14 TENET 11

12. “Legacy” conferencing
» Otherwise known as H.323 or SIP or standards based
» The old way – expensive room based systems and
heavy duty back end processing
» Betrays its telecommunications roots
» Only now waking up to the growth of demand for
mobile and desktop conferencing
» Easy to use (relatively)
» Limited functionality beyond video and audio (e.g.
content sharing)
» Vendors include Polycom, Lifesize, Ayaya, Cisco, etc.
» Business – not education focused
09/10/14 TENET 12
Polycom TPX 204M

13. Web conferencing
» The other end of the spectrum
» Content is king – so presentation is centre stage
» Video and audio not usually as well done. Lack of
echo-cancellation can cause really bad problems
» Good for push – webinar or where interaction is not
so important
» Examples include Adobe Connect, CiscoWebex,
Blackboard Collaborate and Big Blue Button (open
source)
» Doesn’t really move off the desktop to enable
bigger groups to interact
09/10/14 TENET 13

14. Consumer and desktop clients
» Skype
› Great for one to ones and presence
› Network parasite
› Can’t interoperate with anything else
» FaceTime
› Apple only
» Lync
› Part of the MS Office stack – so on a lot of desktops
› Replacing traditional telephony – soft phones
› Can interoperate with many other systems
› One to watch
09/10/14 TENET 14

15. “Modern” approaches
» These use variants of the SVC extension to theH.264 video compression standard (Annex G)
» Sends a base layer which is enough – and then enhancement layers as the circumstances
dictate
» Traffic goes through a media router – but the decoding/encoding is done intelligently on the
end points
» Endpoints get the resolution and detail they can handle
» Advantages:
› Efficient low cost infrastructure – backend is much cheaper than traditional MCUs
› Excellent network resilience - copes well with variable bandwidth situations
› Real time adaption – constant tailoring of what gets sent to each end point
› Flexibility
» Gateways to H.323 world are available
» Lync connector
09/10/14 TENET 15

16. hancement Layer
Base Layer
Significant ImpactSingle Layer (AVC)
Multi-layer (SVC)
Minor or No Impact
AVC - Single Layer vs. SVC - Multi-Layer
Source -Vidyo

17. Cloud services & Integrators
»But we may still have islands on video-
conferencing
»Enter the integrators and cloud services
»But most of these mean traffic going to
Europe or the US – so not really an option at
present in South Africa
»Promise of any system connecting to any
system
09/10/14 TENET 17

18. Some emerging themes
» Software endpoints and infrastructure
› Much cheaper
› More flexible
› User provisioned and launched
» Cloud based offerings – pay for what you use
» Desktop and mobile – connect from anywhere
» Unified communications – presence, IM, telephony and video
» The right tool for the job
» Video in browser –WebRCT
09/10/14 TENET 18

19. So what to use?
» What do you want to do
› Teaching and learning
› Research collaboration and coordination
› Outreach
› Administration
» What does your university give you?
› Rooms
› Desktop
» What can you get access to via the cloud?
› Some of the new approaches can be run in a browser – Web RCT
09/10/14 TENET 19

20. Maths and Physics networks in the UK
» Four major networks
› MAGIC
– The MAGIC group runs a wide range of postgraduate-level lecture courses in mathematics
- http://maths-magic.ac.uk/index.php
› Scottish Mathematical SciencesTraining Centre
– SMSTC's prime aim is to provide high-quality broad training in fundamental areas of
mathematics and statistics for beginning PhD students - http://www.smstc.ac.uk/
› SEPNet (South East Physics Network)
– SUPA is a pooling of physics research and post-graduate education in 8 Scottish
universities - http://www.sepnet.ac.uk/index.html
› SUPA (Scottish Physics Alliance
– SUPA is a pooling of physics research and post-graduate education in 8 Scottish
universities - http://supa.ac.uk/
09/10/14 TENET 20

22. Common issues
» Technology does not absolve the need to manage all
aspects of the network – academic, personnel,
scheduling, etc
› Right governance
› Appropriate training for teachers and students
» The technology enables a rich offering across
mathematics and physics topics that would not be
possible otherwise
» The hardest bit is still getting the students to interact
– and not to hide in the corners
» Other challenges include how to transmit notation –
various capture devices have been used
SEPNet

23. Access Grid Session in Progress
26/11/2013 JiscCo-design 23

24. UK Developments
»Old offering was a farm of MCUs and a rather clunky
booking service, along with a dreadful desktop client
»Visimeet support
»Some advice and guidance on purchasing and use
»Quality assurance of endpoints
»But use was patchy and seemed mostly directed at
schools
»Some heavy use in colleges with multiple sites
09/10/14 TENET 24

25. V-Scene Architecture
» User centric paradigm
› Everyone has own virtual meeting room and ability to
schedule or spin up conferences
› Federated access management
» Janet’s version is a mixed CISCO andVidyo set up
› CISCO for the H.323 side – existing MCUs, rooms, etc
› Vidyo provides the presence & authentication, the
gateway to the CISCO side and the streaming and
broadcast capabilities
› Access Grid folk are also able to join the party
› Telephone bridging also available
26/11/2013 JiscCo-design 25

26. V-Scene (Vidyo) Web Client
»Launches in browser
»Currently Flash with WebRTC coming.
»Minor plugin download (Admin not required)
»Mac and PC available (Linux will be able to join with
WebRTC)
»Up to HD (depending on bandwidth)
»ScalableVideo Codec (SVC)
»Branded for Janet/JISC
26/11/2013 JiscCo-design 26

27. V-Scene Web Client in action
27
https://v-scene.ja.net/UAT/jsp/mr/mr500.jsp?KEY=lbtPEndQymuXi1%2BbLfFRnOjFButG1KNxbmQJrd2HR40%3D

28. Vidyo at CERN
» CERN needed to scaleV-C capabilities
» TraditionalV-C was way too expensive
» Settled onVidyo
» 20,000 user accounts
» Routers in many locations (one coming on line in CapeTown)
» Over 800 concurrent connections at peak
» Cool graphic here: http://avc-dashboard.web.cern.ch/Vidyo
09/10/14 TENET 28

30. Thank you
Rob Bristow
r.bristow@tenet.ac.za
@robbristow