The Video Link
The Guelph-Waterloo Video Link has been in existence since 1992. The Guelph-Waterloo Video Link connects two identical electronic classrooms (one at each campus) with a full- video, four-channel microwave link. The system was designed to facilitate the offering of graduate courses in the joint Guelph-Waterloo graduate programs in chemistry and in physics.
Each campus has an identical classroom which can serve either as an originating or a receiving room. On a tiered floor are desks for forty students arranged in pairs sharing a colour video monitor, control console and microphone.
At the front of the classroom, across the front wall, are two large rear-project ion screens served by colour video projectors and an electronic white-board served by a microcomputer. In front of this wall facing the students is a lectern and a video-graphics station.
In the originating room the lecturer operates as he would in an ordinary classroom. He may write on the white-board which the students may view directly; alternatively they may wish to watch the graphics on their monitor. One previous board's contents are retained in computer memory so that, on the monitors, the students may temporarily select the previous board even though the real board has been erased. In any given class all board contents and voice can be recorded so that a lecture may be reviewed later.
The graphics station performs all the functions of an overhead-transparency and opaque projector, as well as a slide projector. The output appears on one of the video projection screens. The other video projection screen shows a view of the students in the remote class.
The receiving class is identical except that the instructor appears "live" on one of the projection screens. The other screen and the monitors operate in exactly the same fashion as in the originating class.
For the purpose of questions and answers each student may "request-to-question" by pressing a button at his seat (the equivalent of raising a hand). These requests are entered in a stack and may be accessed in turn by the lecturer. Responding to a student's request activates his microphone.
Both rooms may also be operated in a symmetric "conference mode" in which the cameras on the lecturer are deactivated and the classes look at each other (via projection), all microphones are opened and general discussion or meetings may be held.
The operating of the system is "turn-key" and all control functions are pre-set; there is no camera-man or other technician present or required. The idea throughout has been to create an electronically "transparent" wall between two classrooms 25 km apart.
