A case study in high-end communications technology in distance learning

The five principal investigators (PIs) of the graphics and visualization center, a distributed NSF science and technology center, report on the lessons learned from reaching an interactive graduate-level seminar involving their five sites over a high-end communications infrastructure. The experiences related will be of value to institutions presently conducting or considering distance learning. Although the experiences reported here are based an a high-end scenario available to this research center, the present trends in technology and distance education should make these observations applicable in the imminent future to a large number of educational institutions.