ITEC-Ohio Team Wins ADEC Barrier Buster Award

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Apr 2, 2003) — 

The ADEC Bill Murphy Barrier Buster Award was presented to the National Science Foundation Technology and Application Team for its work associated with the implementation of multicast and the National Videoconference on April 2, 2003. The award was presented at the All ADEC Meeting May 1-2, 2003, in San Antonio.

The Bill Murphy Barrier Buster Award recognizes an individual, team, or institution for reducing or eliminating barriers to distance education at the institutional, state, or multi-state level. These barriers may exist anywhere in the system, and include (but are not limited to) policy issues, turf issues, technology issues, faculty incentives, faculty development, and more.

The April 2, 2003 ADEC National Videoconference was a “Barrier Busting” event in many respects. For more than a year ADEC’s Advanced Internet Satellite Extension Project Team had been working with the project engineering staff and Internet2 collaborators to establish a multicasts option via satellite. Testing led by teams from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Iowa Sate University worked closely with Tachyon Inc., using RealMedia and Apple QuickTime to develop the ability to use multicasts as an efficient protocol for bandwidth use to more than 60 V-Sat dishes located throughout the United States as part of ADECnet.

During this period the ADEC team learned that multicasts was not enabled on a number of campuses and that there were strong differences of opinion about the multicasts protocol, itself, and its use via Internet2 and via the satellite system being used in the AISEP project (Tachyon Inc.). While the entire team knew that what was achieved on April 2 was theoretically possible, it took collaboration and major development work to bring the multicasts into operation.

The ADEC NSF Technology and Application Team For Work Associated with the Implementation of Multicasts and the National Videoconference April 2, 2003

ITEC-Ohio and Ohio State University Team

Dr. Robert Dixon - Chief Research Engineer for the OSU Office of the CIO, and Senior Systems Developer Engineer for OSC Networking

Alan Escovitz - Director of External Affairs, OSU Office of the CIO

Pankaj Shah - (former) Director, ITEC-Ohio

Weiping Mandrawa – Systems Developer Engineer, ITEC-Ohio

Arif Khan - Networking Engineer, OSC Networking

Megan Crabb – Technology Specialist, OSC Networking

Gabe Moulton - Technology Engineer, OSU Office of the CIO

Other members of the ADEC NSF Team include:

Kevin Gamble, Project Director-ADEC, North Carolina State University

Dan Cotton, Applications Coordinator and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Team

Paul Jewell and Iowa State Team, Iowa State University

Tachyon, Inc.

Valorie McAlpin and University of Maryland-College Park Team

Dan Godfrey, ADEC and North Carolina A-T State University

Morrell Pridgen, North Carolina A-T State University

Cornelia Flora and North Central Regional Center for Rural Development Team

Craig Campbell, ADEC Tribal College Coordinator

Little Priest Tribal College Team

James O'Kimosh, The College of the Menominee Nation

Helen Long Soldier, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Steven Conn, ADEC Consultant

Roger Hiemstra, ADEC Consultant

ADEC is a non-profit distance education consortium comprising approximately 65 state universities and land-grant colleges. The consortium was conceived and developed to promote the creation and provision of high quality, economical distance education programs and services to diverse audiences, by the land grant community of colleges and universities, through the most appropriate information technologies available.

ADEC is headquartered at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It offers degree programs, academic courses, advanced placement courses for high schools, non-formal education courses and certificates using a variety of technologies. Member institutions offer their programs through the consortium, and several ADEC offerings are designed and taught by more than one university.

The driving vision behind the organization is the extension of educational content and opportunity beyond the traditional boundaries of the university walls, to serving not simply on-campus students but lifelong learners, broader domestic and international communities, under-served populations and even K-12 schools and the corporate and business communities.