We found that students quickly get frustrated if they can't get the sound to work, for example. Upgrades to the campus infrastructure, including installation of fiber optics and high-speed Cisco switches, have provided a more responsive, reliable, and powerful collaborative environment for students to share complex information. And, interestingly, while this experiment still allowed people to communicate using e-mail, their productivity improved this time. The Keys to Long-Term Success Chinowsky plans to continue benchmarking the effects of evolving collaborative technology. Next fall he hopes to integrate the broadcast features of the Microsoft Media Technologies.
Material selection is an important component of building projects.
Without such technology, we could never arrange for all of the team members to attend an industry conference or visit the supplier's site. Today, the Georgia Tech team attends Dr. Fruchter's Stanford classes remotely via live broadcast. Ultimately Media Technologies could also be used to capture Stanford lectures for playback at Georgia Tech student desktops. With this capability, students could view lectures at optimal times, without the conflicts created by the different time zones such as having to arrange their schedules around local classes. We believe the biggest barrier that is holding back implementation of collaborative technology is compatibility.