Summer 2014 53 52 www.TelepresenceOptions.

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N
ew York Universitys campus sits on some of the most
valuable slices of the Big Apple, yet it hasnt been content
to stay there. To prepare students for their future lives
as global individuals, the university has put much efort into
constructing a global network, building locations around the world.
Te university has created 13 global locations outside its core
New York City address, including two degree-granting campuses
in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. Additionally, NYU has 11 global
academic centers in major metropolitan areas such as London;
Paris; Florence; Madrid; Buenos Aires; Ghana; Washington, D.C.;
Berlin; Accra; Prague; Sydney; and Tel Aviv.
Increasingly, courses NYU students take have a growing global
theme. NYU has reinvented its curriculum to support a more
international outlook. But the classes dont just talk about the
greater global world; they bring the greater global world to class.
NYU has incorporated online technology as part of its new role as
a global university, but not in the way you may be thinking. Rather
than creating the kind of massive and impersonal online classes
so popular with many universities these days, NYU is replicating
the brick-and-mortar, face-to-face university experience over the
Internet. Its an approach the university calls the global classroom.
Te global classroom has three key advantages over a more
traditional academic set-up:
1) Students participate in the classes from multiple locations,
providing diferent perspectives.
2) Multiple instructors may joint teach. Any given class
could have professors from New York, London, Abu Dhabi
or beyond. Tey bring not only diferent perspectives but
multiple skill sets and expertise in particular disciplines.
3) Students can gather data locally and then compare it with
their remote peers.
NYU tested the system with a trial class, Where Te City Meets Te
Sea, about how metropolitan areas work with the water systems
around them. Tree diferent professors with expertise in areas
spanning marine biology to urban planning taught the course, and
none of them were in the same city. But through this advanced
video conferencing, they connected their classes into one.
THE TECH BEHIND THE TEACH
Te gold standard of an NYU Global Classroom is the Seminar room.
Tey are equipped to ensure that the 16 to 24 students they typically
hold can be seen and heard on the other side. Otherwise, an of-camera
student would not feel part of the class and would fail to engage.
To achieve this level of participation, Seminar rooms are set up
as a dual-codec environments using the Polycom Architected
Telepresence Experience system. The system uses two cameras
situated to capture one half of the room apiece and then project
those two images to the room in the other location. The
room strategically positions ceiling and table microphones to
capture the full audio in the room as well. This setup creates a
telepresence-like environment that broadcasts the entire room
elsewhere. Why doesnt NYU prefer an immersive telepresence
environment? Because its far too costly for the university to
duplicate the same room designs, furniture and other form
factors from country to country, especially due to the real estate
constraints in New York and other major metropolitan areas.
Since the professors have enough on their minds as it is, Seminar
rooms come with Crestron wireless touch panels to start the video
conferencing, Blu-ray, document camera and other equipment.
Just as helpful, these panels also display an interactive schedule,
letting professors schedule the class (and the video conference
session) in advance or on the fy with the press of a button. Its a
one-button-push approach to running a classroom, keeping the
technology in the background so the class is focused on learning,
not on the technology. According to Mary Killilea, professor for
Where the City Meets the Sea, I was surprised by how easy it
was to feel like it was one class.
NYU has attracted professors specifcally attracted to this unique
approach to global-minded learning, most notably philosopher
Kwame Anthony Appiah, who lef Princeton last year to teach in
NYUs philosophy department and law school. As he told the New
York Times: Teres an enormous value in having students interact
not just with me, but with each other. What happens when you
have a conversation about the most important questions facing
usgender, the environment, animal rightswith people coming
from very diferent places?
Students have given the Seminar classes rave reviews as well,
gushing about them in their evaluations. Tellingly, they dont tend
to talk about loving the technology, but about loving the global
classes themselves. Tats exactly how NYU wants them to feel.
Keeping the technology as invisible as possible helps create a more
intimate educational experience. TPO
CASE STUDY: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
How NYU is using Videoconferencing
to create global classrooms
By Andy Howard
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Howard is Managing Director of Howard
& Associates, a practice director at the Human
Productivity Lab, and an IP video expert with
specialties in streaming video and building
video call centers. Mr. Howard has been at the
forefront of digital video since its inception, with
a focus on helping clients improve their internal
and external communications with video. Mr.
Howard has helped hundreds of large corporate,
government, and educational customers
architect and implement enterprise-wide video
deployments. Mr. Howard is a highly regarded
IP video expert, industryveteran, and a frequent
speaker at leading industryconferences