Arizona State University to Deploy Vidyo to Enable Virtual Classrooms in Tropical Biodiversity with Smithsonian

Wireless News
03-24-2011
Arizona State University to Deploy Vidyo to Enable Virtual Classrooms in Tropical Biodiversity with Smithsonian
Type: News

Vidyo announced that undergraduates and doctoral students from Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences are currently engaged in "face-to-face" interactions with staff scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Panama, using Vidyo's video communication and collaboration solution.

Through multipoint Vidyo conference exchanges, experts from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and scientists at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., are sharing real time classroom activities with ASU professors and students. Vidyo's reach and capabilities extend to remote areas in Panama over general purpose IP networks, including the Internet.
"Vidyo's technology and video conferencing system transforms mediated classrooms on campus into real time, research and learning environments," said Robert Page, Jr., dean of the School of Life Sciences. "Students can participate in high quality video interactions with researchers from remote areas, plus collect and share data via the Internet, all at the same time, on their laptop or desktop PCs or Mac. No other video communications solution offers the kind of access, ease-of-use and quality that we're getting via Vidyo."

The virtual classroom program debuted last Fall semester in ASU's "Current Topics in Tropical Biology class. The course features a series of lectures by experts from ASU and STRI in Panama. In addition to the expanded global classroom activities, Smithsonian researchers are working with ASU colleagues and mentoring students on site in Arizona. One goal of the ASU-STRI collaborative is to promote educational opportunities globally; in particular, research and discovery in the areas of biofuels, social structure, sustainability and species diversity.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution (STRI) in Panama offers facilities that allow staff scientists, fellows, and visiting scientists to pursue a range of tropical studies, from field studies in sustainability and ecoservices to investigations of molecular and marine sciences and sociobiology. The continuity of the institution's long-term ecological programs, for example on Barro Colorado Island, enables in-depth investigations that attract more than 900 elite scientists, students and visitors a year.

Although long distance virtual education has become more common with increasingly sophisticated software and technology that allows conferences to be accessed via the Internet, what sets Vidyo apart is low cost, mobility - the ability to use it in a field setting - use of a simple desktop interface, and the number and quality of multiple simultaneous connections.

More than 2,500 undergraduates are currently enrolled as life sciences majors in the School of Life Sciences. With 650 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff, the School of Life Sciences provides a spectrum of experiences for undergraduate and graduate students that build on ASU's and Arizona's burgeoning role in biotechnical and biomedical research. The dynamic combination of multidisciplinary approaches in collaboration with on- and off-campus partners propels the School of Life Sciences to international leadership in education, urban sustainability science, neuroscience, cellular and developmental biology, genomics and proteomics, social complexity, biogeochemistry, bioethics, emerging infectious disease, and biodiversity assessment and conservation.

Headquartered in Panama City, Panama, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. The institute furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems.

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