MISSION: M. Pazarcı visits the NTU at Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

Purpose: Observation of the NTU facilities and operation to facilitate the final planning of the İTÜ-UZEM Project.

Dates: April 20 to April 27, 1996.

Sponsored by: Air travel by UNESCO under Contract SC/RP 206.011.6 (reimbursement of expenses to be made after the trip upon receipt of this mission report), hotel and other expenses at Fort Collins by NTU (fully paid to M. Pazarcı at the end of the visit).

SUMMARY and OVERVIEW TABLE
 

OBSERVATIONS⁽⁴⁾:

I- NTU:

Remote site students get the NTU degree. NTU, as the degree granting institution, carries the full responsibility of proper conduct at remote sites. So the host institutions do not worry about how the remote classes are conducted.

Although most NTU courses are broadcast live with remote student interaction capability, most remote students do not view the live transmissions but view those classes from tape at their convenience. A prevailing assumption of remote students is that the on-campus students at the host institution will probably ask the same questions that they will have, and the answers to these will also be on tape. The number of questions, and the amount of interaction of the students with the instructor are significantly higher for on-campus students than for remote students, although remote students have about the same interaction capability except for direct person-to-person visual contact.

Only an educational institution with an established TV/video education program is accepted as a host institution to the NTU network. NTU does not setup or help establish the necessary studio and uplink facilities in the host institutions in any way. All the host institutions in the NTU network have had experience in remote video education prior to joining the network. The NTU network has close to 50 top US engineering universities as contributing hosts.

Remote site coordinators are generally trustworthy. However, they change frequently. Although a very low number of problems and misconduct have been observed over the years, there is no sure way of verifying remote site conduct in general.

The NTU 2.9Mbps Spectrum Saver coded video quality is completely satisfactory for educational needs (except for the transmission of computer graphics). The İTÜ-UZEM system will be using a later and improved system with additional capabilities, so a higher quality may be expected at similar average bit rates. The NTU broadcast sound quality (8-bit PCM 64kbps mono) is somewhat limited and of low quality, yet adequate for the intended purpose.

The NTU broadcast network hosts uplink in offset QPSK SCPC form, 14 segments sharing a 60W output 54MHz Telstar transponder in 3Mbps channel rates. Thirteen of these segments are available as educational channels, and the 14th is being used for site-authorization control information. The broadcast video is not encrypted due to technical hardware limitations at the implementation time, but a basic decoder authorization technique (16-bit address range) is used to control the reception. The NTU control data which is broadcast to all sites in one of the 14 channels is received and embedded into the outgoing second sound channel by the particular host institutions. At this time, very flexible and robust encryption and access control techniques are readily available that can be used for our system. With the given satellite, reception is possible with dishes as small as 1.2m diameter, yet larger size dishes (2.4m) are recommended.

The network operational reliability is quite high, and interruptions are quite rare, yet hardware problems occur from time-to-time generally at remote locations. During these down-times, the class may be missed by remote students. The compensation is made by either mailing tapes from NTU, or rebroadcasting these classes from backup tapes to remote-sites at idle times (e.g., nights) for timer-recording. In any case, students view such classes from tape. NTU provides technical support to remote locations when they have a problem. This points to the fact that all contributor/concentrator nodes, and the İTÜ-A main node will need to address such hardware and similar problems, and should be able to provide at least a minimal level of support. The number of support request calls to the NTU staff is said to be about five calls per day. All our C and RO nodes must be equipped to minimize the effects of electric outages on their sites (In the USA, the electric power line problems are quite rare; Turkey is expecting a serious electric energy shortage in the very near future).

Instructors that use hi-tech presentation material (computer slides, animations, video demos etc.) generally earn higher ratings than those that do not. NTU accepts or refuses course repeat offers based on past earned ratings. Proposed repeat course offerings with low ratings are refused. Some very famous and exceptional faculty may also get high ratings despite sloppy teaching and no use of visual aids at all. In host institutions, faculty are generally concentrated on research due to academic trends and pressures, and do not care much about teaching. They are not willing to spend additional time and effort for preparing slides, demos, and similar visual support material for broadcast courses. Hence, the use of visual support material in broadcast courses is lower than might be expected.

If remote students cheat and get caught, they will probably lose their jobs! (It is significantly harder for a fired employee to get another job in the USA than in Turkey due to relaxed reference checking in the latter. Similarly, cheating in the US universities is less frequent among below average American students than among below average Turkish students due to less strict measures against cheating in our universities). Reported student misconduct in the NTU system is quite rare, but it must be kept in mind that the NTU program is a graduate program dealing mostly with employed responsible engineers as the student body. Targeting an undergraduate body will require a significantly different administration of remote sites within our system.

In the NTU network, the flow of teaching is primarily from the host educational institutions (i.e., universities) to remote receiving sites whose primary line of business is not education. Only a few and limited number of course exchanges occur between host institutions, and these occurrences generally compensate for the faculty on leave. In our case, the receiving sites will largely consist of other educational establishments. In our plans, it is important that we keep the share of remote students at private companies at a significant number to secure a minimum income.

NTU claims that their students do not have any problems with regard to being admitted for Ph.D. programs in major universities, or in transferring to other companies. NTU does not seem to have any problems with regard to the academic acceptance or validity of their conferred degrees. It must be borne in mind that they are running a Master's only program, and all telecast courses are given by acclaimed instructors at accredited host institutions. Nearly all top US engineering universities are contributors to the program, are familiar with NTU, and also have a financial interest through NTU.

NTU is an all private nonprofit establishment founded in 1984. The founder of NTU, Lionell Baldwin, has been a faculty member and dean at CSU (also located in Fort Collins) for a long time. It is my belief that Dr. L. Baldwin saw the difficulties of realizing his dream under the umbrella of a large state run university, and left CSU to establish the NTU.

II- CSU:

CSU is a state university (In the USA, state universities are usually shorter on educational funds compared to private universities).

All key positions in the instructional TV division of CSU (same applies to other NTU host institutions) are filled by full time professionals paid at prevailing rates. This is a very important fact. Part time and full time student labor are used only for non-critical jobs. İTÜ-UZEM cannot rely on part-time or temporary personnel for operational positions. However, this requires a competitive wage policy that cannot be met easily within our government payment rules.

CSU has a large graphics and photographic support group for the production of the visual material for video and regular teaching, and a full video post-production unit for video teaching support.

Recorded classes are not edited except for the rare addition of special supplementary footage between classes; it is said that editing of classes is particularly avoided in order to preserve the classical "teacher teaching in front of the blackboard" feeling for the students. Although recorded classes are not edited, special support material may require significant editing.

The CSU SURGE unit has been running a special remote education program for engineering, computer science and business using video tapes sent to remote sites (now, 750 tapes sent per week) by mail since 1967. Although this program is antiquated by today's standards, it is being used for quite a long time and has been successful. This is important in the sense that, even non-real time non-interactive video programs can fulfill educational needs.

CSU has 275 classrooms equipped with viewing equipment. These classrooms can view any of the 20-channels on the campus video network. (However, this 20-channel campus network is not used for a primary educational purpose that any academic programs rely on).

CSU has a PictureTel tele-conferencing system (384kbps within CO state, 112kbps outside CO).

The video classrooms used for broadcasting live classes are equipped with 5 cameras (1 overhead, 1 front, 1 rear, 2 sides, all 3CCD Ikegami units), 5 large screen (27") monitors (4 towards audience, 1 for instructor), speakers (4) and microphones (7), PC/Macintosh computers (+ Magni scan convertors) at instructor's disposal during the class, and 1 control desk with an operator. CSU has 4 such equipped video classrooms of this grade (total 9 video classrooms on campus). Classrooms do not contain any distracting lighting or wiring.

The computer presentations used in classes suffer from PC-graphics to composite video conversion artifacts. Small characters and details are lost in the conversion, and are not discernible on the student monitors (local and remote sites). This problem is compensated by making sure that all registered students get a copy of the class materials (slides, figures etc.) prior to coming to that class. This requires advance planning for the instructor, and a reliable distribution system for the remote education system.

Remote students had higher scores than on-campus students when the NTU programs were non-degree (students taking course for own interest). After NTU degree programs started, remote scores fell below campus scores for some time (students taking some of the courses to fulfill degree requirements); now, scores are about the same for on and off campus.
 

DOCUMENTS⁽⁵⁾: (obtained during the visit)

YOU and NTU: Administrative Contact Guidelines for Success:

Complete information kit for the host institutions: Includes operational, administrative, financial and educational overview, guidelines, and other information.

Operational Procedures Manual:

Complete information kit for the receiving sites: Includes startup, technical, operational, financial, administrative and academic overview, guidelines, setup, forms and other information.
 

CONCLUSION:

Overall, the visit to the NTU was useful and informative. Key observations relevant to the İTÜ-UZEM project have been given above in the Observations section. The information gained from this visit will be incorporated in the next revision of the Report of the Commission for İTÜ-UZEM.

At this time, I feel assured that the İTÜ-UZEM Project is entirely feasible, technically, and academically. NTU is a real working proof which shows that our project is on the right track. The level of technology has improved to the point that we can set up a higher quality, higher reliability network at a lower cost. However, we have our differences and some special obstacles to overcome, particularly in the administrative and legal platforms. Implementing our project within the national state-run educational system has its bureaucratic difficulties, but we do not have an alternative. We must contact our government officials, YÖK and all relevant parties at once, and convince them, win their support and start the necessary steps toward the implementation of İTÜ-UZEM in the shortest possible time frame.

Including the undergraduate education within our system will probably be the first such large scale attempt ever anywhere. I believe we must limit ourselves to the senior classes initially, and expand down to lower levels only if the initial results are satisfactory and promising at these senior levels. We must not underrate the importance of graduate and continuing education. The İTÜ-UZEM project will provide gains unachievable by any other means within our current national status at these levels. System success at the graduate level is almost certain with good planning and satisfactory support. We must contact all private companies as potential remote sites to earn their moral and financial support.
 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. G. Johnson of the NTU for the travel arrangements and for the full and prompt cash payment of the visit related expenses within the USA at the end of the visit, and to Mr. Lakhder of UNESCO for his encouragement and support for our project.

Doç. Dr. Melih PAZARCI,

Project Manager, İTÜ-UZEM 9:00, Wednesday, May 15, 1996

 For a set of pictures of the NTU taken during the trip, please follow this link!

1. Colorado State University

2. (Colorado) State University Resources in Graduate Education

3. Dr. Radford has been teaching the attended course for the last 8 years.

4. In this section, only the observations that I felt as important, new (for me) or significant to the İTÜ-UZEM project are listed.

5. Contact M. Pazarcı @ D1206-EEF, or tel: 212-285 3504 or e-mail: eepazarc@ehb.itu.edu.tr to view or read these documents.