Video Broadcast Solution for Live Instruction in Educational Institutions

Problem

Educational institutions can be highly distributed organizations with personnel in a large number of locations. How do you enable students in a large number of remote locations to have access to quality live instruction, as if they were in the same room as the instructor?

What about Video Conferencing?

Videoconferencing technology can be highly effective for an insutrctional setting that involve a small number of sites, and the recent introduction of High Definition Video enables excellent visual quality. However, the endpoint costs and infrastructure requirements can be extremely prohibitiive for a large number of sites. More importantly, this equipment still requires a highly technical IT staff managing equipment at the remote sites.

What about Web Conferencing?

Web conferencing technology can be highly cost effective, enable two-way voice over IP, and application sharing. But these systems do not provide the crucial High Definition video capability that is required for 'real world' whiteboarding, incorporation of training videos, document cameras, and views of the instructor - all of which are essential to effective instruction.

The Solution

Video Broadcasting technologies enable the transmission of live, low latency video over IP networks, and play a critical role in live instruction and training. Video broadcasting, when used in conjunction with two-way Voice over IP Intercom systems, enable instructors with specialized knowledge and expertise to train personnel in many remote locations simultaneously.

Isn't this just Webcasting?

Webcasting systems do provide value, and broadcast high quality video, but they have very high latencies that make it impossible for live conversations and Q&A between instructor and student, which is essential for many training scenarios. Furthermore, they do not provide purpose-built, highly reliable appliances that can be remotely controlled and monitored, and they don't provide two way voice - all of which are required for a live instructional setting.

What about Video-on-Demand?

Good question. The entire instructional experience is "captured" - whiteboards, PC content, instructor, the Q&A and conversations and converted into a recording that can be accessed via a Video-on-Demand portal. This content can be easily exported to your Learning Management Systems for formalized training.