After nearly a quarter century of there is still a measurable distance between the promise of distance learning and the reality. Videoconferencing, a central tool of distance learning, provides a clear example of this failure to realize significant instructional advances. For reasons both technical and pedagogical videoconferencing applications have not delivered on predicted classroom benefits. However, three emerging technologies — high performance networks, quality packet — switching videoconferencing applications, and wireless networking ñ may make it possible to close the gap between promise and reality.

The purpose of this project is to take advantage of these emerging technologies in order to prototype a tool for the next generation of distance learning. This application would combine the best packet-switched videoconferencing available over a high performance network, with the local mobility available through state of the art wireless networking.

Today nearly all videoconferencing applications, even those over high performance networks, are classroom-to-classroom. The real educational value of videoconferencing, especially at an institution like Indiana University, is not to link classroom-to-classroom, but to take students out of the classroom — to minimize the importance of those walls — and get them into the plants, laboratories, tradeshows, and research centers where the future is being created. And not to put them there as passive voyeurs, in the way a video tape might do, but to put them there as interactive participants, as active learners. There is a strong possibility that the convergence of high-performance networks, quality packet-switched videoconferencing and mobile technologies may make this promise a reality. We are requesting funding to make this possibility tangible.