Several groups at both campuses were involved including telecommunications, computing, media services and the proposers of the Mellon grant. We all began to read more background materials about videoconferencing technology and classroom design since none of us had significant background in the field. Larry Tucker (Kenyon media services, tuckerl@kenyon.edu) attended the International TeleConferencing Association meeting in Philadephia in March, 1998, garnering much new information about mainstream vendors of VC (videoconferencing) systems.
We met in late April, 1998, armed with background materials and advice from Dave Smallen of Hamilton College where they've been using remote collaboration approaches for two years. We submitted an informal request for quotes.
We began to look at vendor demonstrations in May. Notes on the Picturetel demo are available. We were disappointed with the presentation by Accent Communications of the Fujitsu systems. We viewed the Tandberg systems at Ohio State University's facility.
As a result of these demonstrations, we refined our equipment needs, reducing the number of classroom cameras to two and removing the need for voice-activated cameras (those that track the speaker based on sound). We added a VCR to our planned configurations. We had discussed an interactive whiteboard at each location but put this idea into the background until our faculties and staff gained experience with the basic videoconference concept.
From these experiences, we determined a list of criteria and entered the selection phase of the process.